The movable alphabet is a key part of the Montessori Language Curriculum. It comes in a small wooden box that includes red consonant letters and blue vowel letters. In lower elementary, this material is most often used for spelling. Students will lay out their spelling cards, sound out each word, and spell it using the movable letters.
This week, students were shown how to use the movable alphabet to understand one of the important uses of an apostrophe. To understand this type of punctuation mark, we are learning about contractions. Students will build two longer words and contract them into one shorter word using the movable letters. These words or “shortcuts” are often used in our every day speech.