Montessori Article Lesson: A, An and The

 

How do you introduce articles in a Montessori classroom? This simple Montessori grammar lesson helps children discover the difference between a, an and the using everyday classroom objects. In this Montessori Key Experience, children build on their understanding of nouns and explore how articles help us communicate exactly what we mean. The lesson uses hands-on materials, colour-coded labels and questions to encourage children to notice patterns and work out the rules for themselves. It is a useful introduction to articles for younger children or a way to revisit this part of speech with students who need more practice.

You will need 

- A collection of objects some singular some plural e.g. 4 pencils, 3 beads, 5 cups, 6 toy cars, 1 book

- small paper pre cut into strips

- black pen and light blue pen

- A prewritten caption that says 'article'

 

Key Experiences are ways of sparking the imagination of the child. They are given to new or younger children or as ways to introduce or bring life back to a curriculum area. 

1) Gather students

2) Say: Today we have more activities with nouns and some other words. Ask students what they remember about nouns.

3) 'Okay our lesson today relates to nouns'. Arrange the objects into their piles e.g. all the pencils together, the toy cars together.

4) Say: 'I am going to ask you to give me exactly what I want

5) Say: 'Give me a pencil' put emphasis on the 'a.' The child will give you the object. Write a label that says a pencil. Write the 'a' in light blue and the bead word in black. Place the labels beside the object in this case the pencil. Point out to the children that there was more than one pencil and any of these would have been correct.

6) Say: 'Give me the book' put emphasis on the 'the.' The child will you the object. Write a label that says the book. Write the 'the' in light blue and the book word in black. Place the labels beside the object in a different column to the pencil.

7) Continue with the rest of the objects. Place the 'a' objects in one column and the 'the' objects in another column. After you have done several stop and ask students what the rule is for each column

8) If the child has not said clarify. 'When there is more than one object in a set you have a choice of which object to give me so we use the word 'a'. When there is only one of an object we use the word 'the'

9) Have students bring an object/s to the lesson area. Say 'What is its noun/name? How many are there? Do we use a or the?' Have the students write labels for the objects.

10) Where appropriate introduce an alongside a

11) Show the label and/or symbol for the word article.

The cover photo with the description of an article can be downloaded as part of this set