Mariann Manhertz AND Aiofe Ahern
00:00:00 Speaker: Hello and welcome. You are listening to my new podcast series called Montessori Love Stories That Need to Be Told, brought to you by Montessori. In this series, I'll be speaking with Montessori leaders from all around the world who are joining us as speakers at the Montessori Conference in Prague this October twenty twenty five. My hope is that their stories and the themes will explore, will leave you feeling inspired, and perhaps even lead you to join us in Prague this fall. Enjoy the conversation and don't forget to check out the conference website at. Forward slash. Forward slash Montessori conference. Friends. My two guests today are IFA Ahern and Marianne Manhart. IFA has been a Professor of Language Education at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid since two thousand and five, where she is the Coordinator of Foreign Language Studies. She also participated in our building bilingual programs in elementary schools. Erasmus Project as an international expert. Marianne Manhertz is an Army six to twelve trained guide, a practitioner with a lot of experience with teaching English as a second language and also a mother, uh, in a multilingual family. These two amazing experts met at the building Bilingual Programs in Elementary Schools conference and started talking about how to help children in the elementary learn how to read in a second language. And from that conversation started an amazing collaboration of a university expert with an everyday classroom practitioner. Enjoy the podcast. All right. So, uh, welcome Marianne and Eva. Thank you so much for taking the time. Uh, it's very difficult always to manage three schedules, to find common time for people to get together and have a have a conversation about something. So I'm very thankful. And, uh, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Okay. Um, I can't wait to have this, uh, interesting conversation with you about literacy in the elementary. But before we jump to that, can I ask you to please briefly introduce yourself and share with us what journey led you into the field of language and literacy, and maybe even how did you two start working together? Thank you. Okay, Marianne, do you want to introduce yourself first. I can thank you. So I'm Marianne. I'm originally from Hungary. Um, I'm. But now I'm located in Prague. And I moved here like, eighteen years ago because of family reasons. Um, I actually majored in English philology, which is, uh, learning about English language and literature and linguistics. And actually, I wanted to do a PhD in linguistics, but life happened, and I, uh, but I did my master's thesis about comparing languages, uh, um, comparative grammar in Chomsky. So I'm really into linguistics as such. But then I worked in a different field in marketing. And when my children, uh, came to life, then I had to change and shift career. And I started teaching English. I learned a methodology which is called the Heron English. It's a methodology that teaches children from zero to nineteen, and it's looking at, uh, a way how to teach a second language as you learn in your mother tongue. And then the children who who I had there brought me to Angelique, which is a school, uh, a montessori school. And there I fell in love with Montessori, and I, uh, became Montessori guide. And our role is very wide. So it's not just about teaching, um, English language, but I'm trying to connect all subject areas. And then I, uh, started to tackle with the problem that the reading is not going very well in my classroom. And I was searching for a good way to make the children motivated to learn to read. Because the language as it is, it's not phonetic like the Czech language. So reading was very hard for them. And as such the phonics and everything were interested in the first grade or in kindergarten, but not the age when I could start to, uh, start to read with them. And then I met Iva. But I'm going to tell you this later, and I'll give space to IFA to introduce herself. Okay. Good morning. Hello, my name is IFA Ahern and I'm an Irish person, an Irish woman. I've lived in Madrid for a long time. I came here kind of to learn Spanish and then I stayed for family reasons as well. Um, and then I really, I hadn't even, like, started studying, so I, I studied here at the university. Um, Spanish, Spanish philology. Also, um, I began my interest in languages from I can't remember when um, at home. I think my, my dad used to speak different languages to us. Just he used to speak some Irish, some French, whatever, some German, and drop in words and phrases. And for some reason, I had a kind of a finesse or a an interest in languages, you know, just one of those things you don't know why. Um, so I really wanted to learn several languages, and I did, and then I studied philology, I studied English as well, and then I did my PhD on linguistics in Spanish. And then I started my work at the School of Education at the university here in Madrid, where I'm teaching future teachers about how to work in second language programs and bilingual schools, or just teaching English as a second language to children in pre-primary and primary. Um, as to the area of literacy in particular, I'm very interested in this area because of a project that brought to me and a focus, an approach to language and language and literacy learning called Reading to Learn by two authors from Australia, David Rose and Jim Martin. Um, I really love this approach because it's based on linguistics, on a very solid foundation of linguistics, of understanding how language works and what it consists of, and focused on applying this linguistic perspective to actually teaching in the most effective way possible to ensure, um, that all learners can progress equally, or all learners can progress regardless of their background in reading and writing. Um, and it doesn't really matter in which language you work, whether it's the learner's first language or another language. Uh, children need to be need, need, need instruction to develop literacy. And that's what this approach says and what we'll be talking more about it. But this is why I was very excited by literacy, because of this project that showed me, um, the importance of, you know, democratizing education and, um, and trying to overcome the, the problems in education, which are that some students always fail and it isn't fair. And in particular, students with um, with more than one language often are classified as difficult or having more challenges. So this is something that really concerns me, and I think with this approach to literacy. You really address this and you, you don't fall into a trap of treating your children. Um, as if some of them weren't going to be able to do to reach the expectations that they should have set for them. Mm. Well, that's super interesting. It's also a foreign field for me. So I have to navigate carefully all of the terminology you're using. And maybe uh, that's the first question I have. You're working. So you started working together at some point. You met. And maybe Marianne can also share how that came to be, that you started talking about this. And then so you're working together to develop an approach to help children to learn and, uh, to read and write in a second language in context. Okay. Now I would like for you to explain what that means to people like me who don't understand any of this at all. So I can literally tell her about how we met. Uh, basically there was a bilingual Montessori course, and, uh, if I was presenting this method there, um, and, well, she was talking, uh, discovering or telling us more topics. So our first one she was talking about, uh, what is being bilingual. And it really touched my heart because I'm raising, uh, two daughters who are actually trilingual. And, uh, you might think it's very easy to have children with multiple languages, but, I mean, it has its, uh, difficulties and challenges. And she really spoke to my heart. And, um, later on, she introduced, uh, the genre methodology, the context based, uh, learning for reading and writing and how she was, uh, explaining everything. It's really connected with me immediately because this was the way I was teaching in the Montessori class. Basically, I was doing a lot of science biology, and she just showed me the last link to it that I have to go and find a text, or use a text that I'm presenting, and zoom in with your children and do, um, context based reading and then writing that you actually zoom down a few sentences, uh, look at, uh, the key words, the key vocabulary by asking questions and then looking at phonics, grammar, um, and all. We can actually implement anything from the Montessori curriculum through that text. And children, um, got very excited. Everyone was really involved, and they were able to produce, uh, the writing without copying, which always happens even in the first language. When they are asked to do some kind of writing or presentation, they take the book and copy it over. But this didn't happen this time because they really integrated the context of that text we were reading, and they were able to verbally, uh, um, explain what they were reading about. And I think this is not it is vital also in the second language, but it's vital to have this knowledge also for the first language. And um, so we met during that, um, training and then we really connected at the Montessori conference. Bilingual Montessori conference. January. Right. Uh, yeah. So I think the bilingual Montessori conference was a magic opportunity for so many people and so many connections. And in particular, Marianne and I had a lovely conversation and we, you know, we decided, oh, we have to stay in touch. And Marianne was saying how she was really interested in working on literacy. And I was saying, I'm really interested in working with teachers because I teach people who are going to become teachers, and normally they go off and then I don't really it's very difficult for us to stay connected because once they begin working, you know, they go off on their own paths and, and they're doing their own thing. So, um, then we kind of kept in touch and we decided to, to do this work together to, um, apply kind of what I explained about genre pedagogy. So the idea is that, um, you know, the idea of language and written language and context is important, I think, to understand what we're talking about. Um, when we just describe the approach that we're, that we're going to show in the, in the training session, in the webinar workshop. Um, it's about how language, um, when we use language, we use it for certain purposes, and it's organized in a certain way based on our intention, our purpose for which we're using it. So when we, for example, tell someone instructions or give a recipe, we have to say it in a certain way. It's organized clearly into steps, for example. But if we're describing somebody, we use language in a very different way. It doesn't have steps. It has, um, information about the person's characteristics, maybe physical, maybe their personality, etc. um, and so on. For any kind of, um, communicative purpose. We organize language in a certain way. And this is important for reading and writing, because whenever we we're about to read something, we use the context. We, we, we, we understand in some way what we're going to read. We can tell if a book is a novel or a story, or if it's an information book, just by looking at the cover and straight away by the pictures, by the type of words that appear. We have a set of expectations that are awoken in our minds without us thinking about it in an automatic way. And this is something that children, of course, when they're very young, don't have yet, and they need to learn about these things. Um, also in a second language, um, reading and writing is more difficult because children have, um, they're exposed to the language in spoken form, and language is very different in its written form than than the way we use it in spoken form. And another really important point about the context idea is usually in reading and writing in the foreign language, children are working with just a single words or maybe little phrases or Sentences and very simple kind of matching. They rarely work within with a whole text, and actually working with the whole text is aligned with what I'm saying about the fact that we use language and are organized in certain ways, depending on its purpose, and that organization is something that we're aware of implicitly. Somehow we know about it. But if we just extract some little bits of phrases or words from a bigger text, it loses the context and it makes it less meaningful. It doesn't really tell us anything. It's just words, random words. And so it's harder for children to really make a jump from looking at single words, or practicing copying or writing phrases, to being able to really use the written language, or to pick up a book and actually read it themselves, even though they may have the mechanics of reading and writing from another language that they've already been learning. Thank you. That's really interesting. I'm thinking how much that aligns with Montessori principles. Yes. And I can see very much how Marianne finds it that it speaks to her heart. Marianne, I ask you, you said that at home you have a multilingual environment. And also at school you work in a multilingual environment. And you said you you faced some challenges or you experienced some challenges at school. Also at home. Um, what were they? Um, you know, uh, with, with literacy and, and second language acquisition. Can you share some of those challenges? Thank you. Yes, yes. Um, basically it's about, uh, the differences between Czech and English language that, uh, English language is being non-phonetic, whereas Czech in my mother tongue, Hungarian is also very phonetic language, and in order to acquire that English reading technique, I think you need to learn a certain phonics that makes you able to be fluent. Reader. Because my children were very frustrated that they were used to, uh, be able to read the words which was put in front of them. And this way they were not able to code, uh, and were not able to read. And just as such, like, uh, helping them, because first I was looking at the phonics as a separate set, and they were probably be interested in the first grade or in the kindergarten, but they didn't have the vocabulary yet because they need, uh, first, if you learn a second language, you need to have a certain knowledge and understanding before you go and move on. Reading and writing. So the moment we got to the level with the children they were not interested in doing phonics as such, and I was really trying very hard and sweating to find an approach that is intriguing because, you know, Montessori says you have to follow the child, and if you are not taking the material, then you have to look for something else and keep searching. And then, um, then I found this way that, you know, there has to be an oral introduction to the to the reading. So it comes with a montessori and presentation. Uh, and then you can go deeper and then you can look at the text that is connected to something they are already aware of. They have rich vocabulary, rich understanding. And then it was just hand in hand going together like smoothly, uh, because they knew the vocab, uh, they knew the context. And then reading became very, uh, successful. And so basically that was the biggest challenge, you know, that. Make them excited about reading. That's amazing. Yeah, they need to have this certain understanding. So what was going through my mind right now is that maybe you could apply for your PhD at the university, where if I works, if I can be your supervisor. And yes, it's like Baker. I'm sorry. It's just like the most logical next step that I'm seeing when I talk to the two of you. That's really wonderful. That would be amazing. Yeah. One of the other terms that you are using and you're going to talk about during the workshop is learning to write by reading deeply. That caught my interest. What is deep reading? So well, we can both answer. I think I'll say a few words and maybe Marianne, you can continue. Um, I was involved in the bilingual Montessori project and I was reading up, you know, I didn't really have a lot of background knowledge about Montessori and, um, a phrase I came, I came across in the Australian Montessori curriculum because they have a curriculum kind of all written up, kind of official, and it was total reading, and I kind of liked that expression. And I looked into, you know, what do they mean? And really what they mean is what we understand in other in other places. Um, in more, you know, whatever academic terms is, um, full comprehension, um, and full comprehension when we read is we understand the, the literal meaning, we understand the meaning, the encoded meaning of the words that we read. We also infer, we add information. And for example, from the discourse, like from the whole text, from the pictures to, to kind of complete the meaning. That's just literal. And then we have interpretive meaning, which is when we think more deeply, we compare what we read with our own experiences or with other texts that we've read. And then we come to conclusions. We're able to assess what we read, the quality of the of the writing, the author's deeper intentions and what they're, you know, kind of, um, alluding to in an indirect way and so on. And so that's what what we mean by a deep reading. And the important point about what we're going to be showing at the in the workshop is, um, how do we learn to write? And this is kind of maybe it's new in Montessori in a certain way, because I know in Montessori there's a very big, um, focus on firstly, developing the physical, you know, the physical motor skills, the fine motor skills. And I think that's really beautiful how that's very clearly connected in with physical actions and, um, with tangible work to coming And then this, the way that children are introduced to the magic of being able to put your words into visual form and to put your message on into a material, um, representation. Um, but that maybe there's a link missing or that's not really highlighted enough. Where does it where do we how do we become able to really write well? We have to be able to read and we think about what we've read. So if I want to write a story, I think about other really good stories I've read, and I think about how the author made those stories, what kind of organization they used, what the plot was like, the different characters. If I want to write, um, a recipe, I think about recipes, good recipes. How are they set up? If I want to write, um, something academic, I have to look at the publication, for example, a journal. What are the articles are there. What are the topics people write about? How you know, how, um, how abstract and difficult and complex is the writing. And I try to kind of imitate it. So the idea is like the vygotskian idea that we get language from, um, interacting and from being in, in involved with other people or in this case, from reading. And this is a special form of how we use language when it's written down. And we need to have that reading experience and the understanding to get ideas for writing and to know how to organize what we write. So that's kind of. Yes. Go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that would be the part where you talk about the fact that children first have to live experiences in their new language, in the new language they're trying to acquire before we start reading and writing. That's what you're saying, right? Yeah. Well, you know, what I was just saying now is more about we get what we're we get the knowledge that we need to write well from reading. But what Marianne showed me as well, in the way she organized the projects she'd been doing, is it's not. And I think it's very Montessori and it's not enough just to read. You also need to first live. So if you're learning about some topic, you need to really experience, have some experiences with that topic. And if it's in a foreign language, even more because otherwise you won't have the vocabulary to really be able to read and understand well. And when you're reading, if you keep thinking about, you know, what is this word? What is this word? What is this word? You really can't understand what the message of the text. So, Marianne, maybe you want to say something about the experiential part. I think it was really important making something, going out and doing something. So we chose a topic, uh, together with Eva, and it was about the work of the water and then mainly about the water cycle. Um, we have beautiful, uh, presentations from our curriculum. So we started with making the river model. We went out, we talked about how the water is working. What is it doing? What is it doing? Then we zoomed into the water cycle. What are those key, uh, steps in the water cycle? And, um, then we created a model like we incorporated even art and craft and, uh, through this model making, uh, they learn these key vocabulary and actually the whole process. So they needed to have also that physical experience, uh, touching with their hands, building it really like incorporating their heart what they're going to read about. And then we zoomed in a short text, uh, we, uh, asked these questions to identify the key vocabulary. And we looked into the grammar like we use the grammar symbols. We looked for the patterns. And by zooming into this same text like two or three times, they really learned the whole idea by heart. And it was very easy and simple for them to put those words onto paper. And this really amazed me how much they they didn't memorize anything. It was a whole process, like many, many steps. They were we were like focusing on the same thing over and over again with a different touch. And this helped them to internalize the knowledge beautifully. And they were able to orally present it and write it down. And we are going to show this beautiful example in the workshop. Wow, you're you are after something really profound. And I and I love the the way you combine efas academic knowledge and research knowledge and experience, and then you're actually being in the classroom and learning from how to do these things. And I think, I think, uh, this this could make a lovely research study. I'm very grateful. I'm really, really glad that I met because I was struggling for years, um, to really, uh, have a profound, uh, reading in the elementary, especially when you don't start from from grade one because they didn't have enough level of good level of English. And then then it came the perfect time to. Yeah. Thank you. I can't wait for the webinar to take place. So I'm going to share some of these specific steps and maybe even some things that, uh, the guides can actually start implementing. Uh, what are going to be the main takeaways of the webinar. Can you share? Yeah, we're going to share. Um, well, first I wanted to just say one more thing about the idea of the context and the experience before you read and write and why it's so important. Um, one very, very important reason for doing this is that, um, children are different. Each individual is different from the others, and some of them are really ready to do reading and writing. And they've families have done many different things with them, and they can make the connections. Others may maybe haven't got the same kind of experiences. They maybe come from a different place, or their families are doing different things. And so when you you take on a topic, um, you really need all of the children to be prepared at a certain level. So doing those experiences, doing things with them at school where they're going to link the new words in the new language to what's going on, to the what they feel, what they experience, and so on, is making a level playing field where when you start with the reading and writing, they're all they all have a basis, and that's going to allow them to really engage with the with the with understanding the text and writing a new text. So that's about, you know, how building this, um, preparation for all the children at school is, is, is really the way to ensure that all children can succeed? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then. Yeah. And then the question about what are the guides going to take away. Well, I think they'll understand really well why we talk about genres and what a genre is. So it's a way, you know, we'll explain it in detail and we'll show examples. And I think that they'll also take away, um, a kind of basis to begin trying out the kind of experiences like what Marianne has done in their own classrooms. With some it takes some time to prepare. But I think, as Marianne was saying, you know, the, the, the what you get out of it is very valuable. So any time you invest in preparing, it's going to be paid. It's going to pay off really, really well for you and for your for the children. Mhm. Is there something else you want to add Marianne. Well I, I'm hoping that there will be uh right. Ready to implement this reading and writing methodology into their cars because I think those steps are going to be very clear. And they, they don't need to, you know, look for a different method because it's like, you know, it's a matchmaking. You have those things in your album and then you just need to find a text that is connected. And it can be. I was even doing my own story, my own narrative this time. You can use your own writing and then zoom in with your children and make them very powerful readers and speakers also and writers. So I'm I'm very hopeful that they will go away with, you know, ready to go into the classroom and try try it out what they want to listen to. I have goosebumps. I have to say, I think I'm going to make sure that Carla, uh, Foster and Kayla morenz, our trainers, uh, listen to this podcast to get them, uh, you know, to get them interested to come to the webinar because, uh, this is really this is really amazing. And, uh, my brain always sees all the opportunities down the road. So I'm, I'm reading from my glass ball. There's a big future of this for this approach. Uh, money on this last question is, uh, for you, if you could describe it, and it's a big one. Uh, but, uh, it's an important question. If you could describe your vision for how we approach second language acquisition in Montessori environments in the future, what would it be? Well, I think it has to be language as such, uh, is about communication. So, uh, you have to envision it as, as you're using it as a first language. I think it has to be very much context based and based on a lot of experience and discussion. And then once you have all these, uh, oral introduction, uh, experiences, then you can go on into reading, uh, in the bilingual settings. Uh, thank you so much. I am so happy that the two of you met at the conference and that you were able to talk. And, uh, it just gives me a sense of fulfillment as well when I see that the conference and all the work we've done in the bilingual Montessori project, uh, sold all these little seeds of other projects and of other amazing work, so, and that you continue to work with each other even outside of the project. I think Erasmus, uh, authorities would be very happy with our work. Maybe I can send them this podcast to to see that it's continuing. Thank you so much. Uh, to both of you. And I'm really, really looking forward to come to the webinar, uh, in January. So, um, thank you. Thank you. And congratulations to you for being the motor of the, of the Erasmus project and the bilingual Montessori work. Thank you. We are very grateful for this opportunity. Thank you. Thank you. And it's my honor. It's. It always feels so good when I see that, you know, some some amazing work like this is being done. So thank you. And I'll see you at the webinar. See you there. Thank you for listening to this episode of Montessori Love Stories that Need to be Told. If you felt inspired by this conversation, imagine what it will be like to meet these amazing leaders in person at the Montessori Conference in Prague this fall. We'd love for you to join us. You'll find all the details, including the full speaker lineup and program, on our website at npr.org. Until next time, you keep leading with love, and I'll keep telling Montessori stories that need to be told.
