With horses and pigs, grammar gets real—and children love it.

Writing matters. It matters immensely today—not just for those who would earn their keep by being professional writers, but for everyone who works with other people. A cover letter for a job application, texting clients or colleagues, posts on social media, and emails we send around at the speed of light: everyone today is a writer, and the quality of their writing reflects back on their competence and professionalism.

A key question for parents evaluating schools then becomes, where will my child learn to write well? Some children are natural writers and will absorb much skill from just reading, but for many, becoming a good writer requires precise training.

At LePort, we teach writing systematically, from preschool on. We purposefully identify key component skills and teach those skills through activities that our students find both challenging and enjoyable. Grammar—the art of putting words together to communicate clearly and compellingly—is one of these component skills. Grammar allows children to think about writing. It is essential to rise above writing merely spoken language, to gain the ability to leverage the higher power of the written word to express their ideas with precise articulation.

This article makes a good argument for why teaching grammar matters:

What we can do with written language is very different from what we can do with spoken language. When we write, we have time to hone and craft our language, and so the grammar of our writing is very different from the grammar of our speaking.

When we don’t teach grammar we stifle creativity and limit possibilities for many children. We leave them to fall back on what they intuitively know about language, and as a consequence they simply write like they speak.

Subsequent teacher comments on their writing are vague and unhelpful – ‘too informal, too colloquial, too chatty, rambling, repetitive’. Kids need more direction than this; they need someone who can show them what is possible in written language and how to achieve it.

All children deserve to be able to use language with intention and effect, for any purpose and in all circumstances. Indeed their capacity to do so is what they are assessed on everyday at school, so if teachers don’t teach what school is assessing we are being negligent.

While many schools have pulled back on teaching grammar fully, and others teach it in ineffective ways, as dry rules to be memorized by rote, at LePort grammar instruction starts in preschool. Students start with engaging hands-on materials—and systematically progress to a more abstract, systematic understanding. Scroll to the bottom to see if you can answer the questions on a 7^th grade grammar test at LePort—and whether you could ask the type of questions our middle school students ask their teachers about grammar.

Discover how grammar is fun at LePort Montessori—and how far students can go when taught well!

As part of learning to read, LePort Montessori students read words written on small slips of paper—words that instruct them to do certain things, like hop, sit, clap. Acting out the word allows them to connect silent reading with meaning. It also gives them an implicit understanding of action words—or verbs.

In the Sensorial Area, children learn to categorize things by their attributes—color, size, shape, texture. They learn adjectives implicitly, without naming them (yet)!

Once children become readers, we also introduce them sensorially to simple grammar concepts—like the difference between definite and indefinite article. They experience grammar—instead of just learning it from books—at the very age where they naturally have a fascination with language and want to understand how it works.

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One fun material in an authentic Montessori primary room (often missing in less-authentic settings) is the The Farm. While this material looks like a toy, it has the specific purpose of setting up scenes that children can describe and then use to explore grammar with colorful symbols.

Here, a primary boy is writing labels and illustrating them with the Montessori grammar symbols: a large black triangle for a noun, a smaller blue triangle for the adjective, and a yet smaller light-blue triangle for the article.

After some practice and lessons, kindergarten-age students can correctly identify and label with the grammar symbols the many parts of speech—nouns, adjectives, articles, prepositions, conjunctions.

As many materials in Montessori, the grammar symbols themselves are beautiful and made of wood. Here, a lower elementary teacher uses the grammar symbol while labeling and describing materials in the classroom: “the large seastar.”

Dr. Montessori chose the symbols carefully. The black pyramid is solid and doesn’t move: it stands for a noun. The red sphere can roll so it’s active and represents the verb (the “action word” children first learned about in the primary program).

During the primary program, children mostly explore grammar with concrete symbols: they are sensorial learners and absorb knowledge best with direct labels.

By elementary, children’s imagination becomes an important part of how they learn. That’s why we tell more stories around the content we teach. This photo shows the story of the “noun family.” The mom is the noun (black triangle). She keeps the baby (tiny light blue triangle) close to her—just like the article always stays right with the noun. The older child (blue triangle) stays near her mom—but may wander a bit further away, just like an adjective from a noun.

Once children know the basic grammar symbols, they get introduced to the grammar boxes. With this material, children learn to understand the function of words in the context of sentence. They lay out color-coded cards to make sentences printed on a card—and playfully discover how words work together to make meaning.

Like many materials in Montessori, the grammar boxes start simple and become more complex over time, as new symbols (new parts of speech) are introduced, practiced, and mastered.

Older elementary children use their knowledge of grammar to better understand how the sentences and stories they write work. They begin to think about language—to understand and be able to articulate how it works, instead of just speaking or writing intuitively.

Grammar should be fun! Here, a class of lower elementary students are performing a musical about grammar. Activities that integrate music, performance, and subject-matter topics (grammar, in this case) are common in Montessori and help children have fun as they master academic content.

As elementary children enjoy socializing, we encourage them to work together. A younger child may observe some older children, or an older child may be asked by a younger child to help them work out a problem. This benefits both the mentor and the mentee: the mentee has access to immediate help—while the mentor revisits and solidifies prior knowledge by reviewing it as she helps her younger peer.

In addition to learning about the role words play as parts of speech (adjective, noun, preposition), children also learn to think about the structure of sentences (subject, predicate, object). As everywhere in our LePort Montessori program, we start with simple sentences—and we concretize them with colorful symbols.

As children become older, Montessori programs purposefully transition them from concrete to abstract. In grammar, in our upper school program, children diagram sentences to highlight the structure and interrelation between words.

Grammar doesn’t need to be about dry academic text. Here, an 8^th grader diagrammed a sentence from a rap song—not as easy as it might seem: “Look. If you had one shot or opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment, would you capture it or just let it slip? Yo.”

Understanding grammar well means applying it! Here, an upper school student is using the sentence diagramming that he learned in his Grammar class to parse the statement of a geometry problem.

Games help make grammar fun! Here, students race to compete in a sentence diagramming grammar relay.

Our middle school students reach quite advanced levels of grammar understanding. We challenge you to see if you could answer the questions on this seventh grade grammar test.

With our engaging program, grammar—a dry subject that seldom creates enthusiasm in students—comes to life. Read the following quote, posted on one of our closed Facebook groups by one of our upper school teachers, and be wowed by how deeply middle school students can think about language.

One of the reasons we love what we do here at LePort is that we have students who not only passionately engage in our grammar diagramming curriculum, desiring to absorb and understand the variety of specific language designed to represent English’s nuances, but most of our students’ engagement in the material extends far beyond our expectations. How refreshing and inspiring is the relentless curiosity of our youth!

Just last night, I received an email from a contemplative student.

She asked, “Can participles be predicate adjectives? If so, would you diagram the participle ‘elbow’ on the stilts that gerunds and infinitives have?”

In response, this student and I were able to discuss the implications of each grammatical form, her subsequent reasoning, and ultimately, conclude together that her thought process was exactly the sort of mental procedure a grammar wizard in the making would practice.

I am thankful to be in an environment where students are actively encouraged to exceed our teaching intentions.

-Allie, teacher at LePort Montessori

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With horses and pigs, grammar gets real—and children love it.

Discover how grammar is fun at LePort Montessori—and how far students can go when taught well!

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