Pink phrase cards

What are the Montessori pink phrase cards?

The Montessori pink phrase cards are horizontal pink cards with a picture on the left of the card with a matching phrase next to it. (the phrase cards have three-letter phonetic words as well as puzzle words on them)

How are the Pink phrase cards presented?

The directress invites the child to work with her and begins by telling her that they are going to be reading phrases. She explains to the child that a phrase does not have capital letters or full stops. She introduces the first phrase card to the child and asks him what he thinks the picture on the left-hand side is - for example, a dog.

The child is encouraged to sound out, blend, and read the words, one by one until the entire phrase has been read, for example, the big dog. She reminds him that ‘the’ is a sight word. The directress repeats in the same manner with as many phrase cards as possible.

The directress remembers that when there is one object in the picture, then ‘the’ is used, e.g. the big dog. If there is more than one object in the picture, and only one object is being referred to then ‘a’ is used, e.g. a fat pig. If there is more than one object in the picture and all of them are being referred to then ‘the’ is used, e.g. the fat pigs.

In the second presentation for this activity, it increases in difficulty as the pictures are lose. The directress encourages the child to read the phrase cards and match them to their corresponding pictures.

The directress repeats this process in the same manner with the second blue and green phrase cards.

The Montessori language learning process

There is a step by step process for all language materials in a Montessori classroom. The directress must first complete the pink reading materials (three-letter phonetic words), then the blue reading materials (four or more letter phonetic words), and finally she moves on to the green reading materials (phonograms e.g. ee, th, sh, ay, ie etc).

The directress presents the Blue sentence cards in the same manner as the Pink phrase cards. The difference is there are now four or more letter words instead of three, as well as the difference being a sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, and a phrase does not.

The directress presents the Green sentence cards in the same manner as the Blue sentence cards. The child reads a sentence containing phonograms.