THE MONTESSORI ELEMENTARY MATERIAL

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THE MONTESSORI
ELEMENTARY MATERIAL

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The patent rights in the Montessori apparatus and material are controlled, in the United States and Canada, by The House of Childhood, Inc., 16 Horatio Street, New York. The publishers are indebted to them for the photographs showing the Grammar Boxes.

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

So far as Dr. Montessori's experiments contain the affirmation of a new doctrine and the illustration of a new method in regard to the teaching of Grammar, Reading and Metrics, the following pages are, we hope, a faithful rendition of her work. But it is only in these respects that the chapters devoted to these subjects are to be considered a translation. It will be observed that Dr. Montessori's text is not only a theoretical treatise but also an actual text-book for the teaching of Italian grammar, Italian reading and Italian metrics to young pupils. Her exercises constitute a rigidly "tested" material: her Italian word lists are lists which, in actual practise, have accomplished their purpose; her grammatical categories with their relative illustration are those actually mastered by her Italian students; her reading selections and her metrical analyses are those which, from an offering doubtless far more extensive, actually survived the experiment of use in class.

It is obvious that no such value can be claimed for any "translation" of the original material. The categories of Italian grammar are not exactly the categories of English grammar. The morphology and, to a certain extent, the syntax of the various parts of speech differ in the two languages. The immediate result is that the Montessori material offers much that is inapplicable and fails to touch on much that is essential to the teaching of English grammar. The nature and extent of the difficulties thus arising are more fully set forth in connection with specific cases in our text. Suffice it here to indicate that the English material offered below is but approximately "experimental," approximately scientific. The constitution of a definitive Montessori material for English grammar and the definitive manner and order of its presentment must await the results of experiments in actual use. For the clearer orientation of such eventual experiments we offer, even for those parts of Italian grammar which bear no relation to English, a virtually complete translation of the original text; venturing meanwhile the suggestion that such studies as Dr. Montessori's treatise on the teaching of Italian noun and adjective inflections—entirely foreign to English—may prove valuable to all teachers of modern languages. While it might seem desirable to isolate such superfluous material from the "English grammar" given below, we decided to retain the relative paragraphs in their actual position in the Italian work, in order to preserve the literal integrity of the original method. Among our additions to the text we may cite the exercises on the possessive pronouns—identified by Dr. Montessori with the possessive adjectives—the interrogatives and the comparison of adjectives and adverbs.

Even where, as regards morphology, a reasonably close adaptation of the Italian material to English uses has been possible, it by no means follows that the pedagogical problems involved remain the same. The teaching of the relative pronoun, for instance, is far more complicated in English than in Italian; in the sense that the steps to be taken by the child are for English more numerous and of a higher order. Likewise for the verb, if Italian is more difficult as regards variety of forms, it is much more simple as regards negation, interrogation and progressive action. We have made no attempt to be consistent in adapting the translation to such difficulties. In general we have treated the parts of speech in the order in which they appear in the Italian text, though actual experiment may prove that some other order is desirable for the teaching of English grammar. The English material given below is thus in part a translation of the original exercises in Italian, in part new. In cases where it proved impossible to utilize any of the Italian material, an attempt has been made to find sentences illustrating the same pedagogical principle and involving the same number and character of mental processes as are required by the original text.

The special emphasis laid by Dr. Montessori upon selections from Manzoni is due simply to the peculiar conditions surrounding the teaching of language in Italy, where general concepts of the national language are affected by the existence of powerful dialects and the unstable nature of the grammar, vocabulary and syntax of the national literature. We have made no effort to find a writer worthy of being set up as a like authority, since no such problem exists for the American and English public. Our citations are drawn to a large extent from the "Book of Knowledge" and from a number of classics. Occasionally for special reasons we have translated the Italian original. The chapter on Italian metrics has been translated entire as an illustration of method; whereas the portion relating to English is, as explained below, entirely of speculative character.

To Miss Helen Parkhurst and Miss Emily H. Greenman thanks are due for the translation of the chapters on Arithmetic, Geometry, and Drawing.

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CONTENTS

class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">3 II.  Word Study 12   Suffixes and Prefixes 13   Suffixes 13   Prefixes 17   Compound Words 18   Word-Families 20 III.  Article and Noun 22   Singular and Plural 25   Masculine and Feminine 27   Singular and Plural in English 33 IV.  Lessons—Commands 39   Nouns 40   Commands on Nouns 48 V.  Adjectives 51   Analyses 51   Descriptive Adjectives 51   Permutations 55   Inflection of Adjectives 56   Logical and Grammatical Agreement of Nouns and Adjectives 59   Descriptive Adjectives 61   Adjectives of Quantity 63   Ordinals 64   Demonstrative Adjectives 64   Possessive Adjectives 65   Comparison of Adjectives 65 VI.  Verbs 66   Analyses 66   Permutations 68   Lessons and Commands on the Verb 69  

class="c5">Lessons with Experiments 74 VII.  Prepositions 77   Analyses 77   Permutations 80   Lessons and Commands on Prepositions 81 VIII.  Adverbs 85   Analyses 85   Permutations 87   Lessons and Commands on Adverbs 90   A Burst of Activity: the Future of the Written Language in Popular Education 93   Commands Improvised by the Children 96 IX.  Pronouns 98   Analyses 98   Personals 98   Demonstratives 99   Relatives and Interrogatives 99   Possessives 101   Permutations 101   Lessons and Commands on the Pronoun 102   Paradyms 106   Agreement of Pronoun and Verb 108   Conjugation of Verbs 110 X.  Conjunctions 113   Analyses 113   Coordinates 113   Subordinates 114   Permutations 115   Lessons and Commands on the Conjunction 115   Comparison of Adjectives 117 XI.  Interjections

href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@42869@[email protected]#Page_120" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">120   Analyses 120   Classification 122 XII.  Sentence Analysis 124   Simple Sentences 124   The Order of Elements in the Sentence: Permutations 132   Compound and Complex Sentences 136   Test Cards 140   The Order of Clauses in the Sentence: Sentence Forms in Prose and Verse 144   Permutations 147   Test Cards 151   Coordinating and Subordinating Conjunctions 155   Sequence of Tenses 157   Punctuation 160 XIII.  Word Classification 164   Kinds of Words 164   Classified According to Formation 164   Classified According to Inflection 165   Classified According to Their Use 165
PART II READING I.  Expression and Interpretation 171   Mechanical Processes 171   Analysis 173   Experimental Section: Reading Aloud 179   Interpretations 182   Audition 196   The Most Popular Books 198
PART III ARITHMETIC I.  Arithmetical Operations 205   Numbers 1-10 205  

class="c5">Tens, Hundreds and Thousands 208   Counting-frames 210 II. The Multiplication Table 217 III.  Division 223 IV.  Operations in Several Figures 225   Addition 225   Subtraction 227   Multiplication 228   Multiplying on Ruled Paper 235   Long Division 237 V.  Exercises with Numbers 241   Multiples, Prime Numbers and Factoring 241 VI.  Square and Cube of Numbers 251
PART IV GEOMETRY I.  Plane Geometry 259 II.  Didactic Material Used for Geometry 265   Squares and Divided Figures 265   Fractions 267   Reduction of Common Fractions to Decimal Fractions 273   Equivalent Figures 277   Some Theorems Based on Equivalent Figures 282   Division of a Triangle 289   Inscribed and Concentric Figures 290 III.  Solid Geometry 292   The Powers of Numbers 294   The Cube of a Binomial 295   Weights and Measures 295
PART V DRAWING I.  Linear Geometric Design Decoration 301   Artistic Composition with the Insets

tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">305 II. Free-Hand Drawing: Studies from Life 307
PART VI MUSIC I.  The Scale 319 II.  The Reading and Writing of Music 326   Treble and Bass Clefs 328 III.  The Major Scales 333 IV.  Exercises in Rhythm 341   Singing 365   Musical Phrases for Rhythmic Exercises 367 V.  Musical Auditions 376
PART VII METRICS I.  The Study of Metrics in Elementary Schools 383   Stanza and line 384   Rhyme 384   Tonic accents (stresses) 385   Parisyllabic lines 386   Imparisyllabic lines 388   The cæsura 391   Metrical analyses 392   Translator's note on English metrics 395   Material for nomenclature 404   Appendix I 409   Appendix II 423

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ILLUSTRATIONS