The Montessori Elementary Material / The Advanced Montessori Method

Permutations

The function of the pronoun as a substitute for a noun has been made clear in the analysis of the above sentences. After the children themselves have composed the first sentence with the colored cards they form the second sentence by taking away the noun card and substituting the corresponding pronoun. In the work done by the teacher to give the child an idea of the normal position of the pronoun, let her remember that in Italian personal pronouns precede the verb except in interrogation (where the subject may follow) and in cases where the subject is specially emphasized and where the pronouns appear as a suffix (infinitive, participle and imperative).

Lessons and Commands on the Pronoun

Explain these pronouns as briefly and practically as possible from the point of view of speaker and listener, etc., one child commanding the others while they execute the command along with him. Example: The teacher, named for instance Anna Fedeli, explains in this way: "I don't say Anna Fedeli; I say I." "To Carlino here I don't say Carlino; I say, you." "Of Gigino, over there, I don't say Gigino; I say he," etc., etc.

The command is given by a child; but he himself executes the first personal form along with the other children:

From these exercises the notion gradually develops that:

Other commands may be dramatized by small groups as follows:

—The first person must put a question the second must answer, and the third from a distance must try to hear both of them.

—Let the first one write, the second one watch, and the third one say "That is not right."

The following commands may be read aloud by the child:

—I ask you a question very softly. You answer me; and he, over there, must try to hear both of us.

—I shall write; you must act as if you were trying to read what I am writing; and then he, over there, will call out: "That is not right."

Direct Objective Personal Pronouns: me, you, him, her, us, you, them (mi, ti, si, lo, la, ci, vi, si, li, le).

Reflexives and reciprocals: myself, yourself, etc., each other.

(Here too one child commands executing the first personal forms, while the others act out the second and third):

—I touch the oil-cloth on the table; I touch myself; I touch you; you touch yourself; I touch him; you touch her; let us touch each other; you touch me.

—Charles, take the whisk-broom and brush the table; Charles, brush me; Charles, brush him; Charles, brush her; Charles, brush yourself.

—Mary and I bow to the teacher; now we bow to you; now we bow to him; now we bow to her; now we bow to each other.

—I lead George by the hand to the window; I lead you by the hand to the window; I lead him by the hand to the window; he leads us by the hand to the window; we lead her by the hand to the window.

Indirect object personal pronouns: me, te, se, mi, ti, si, le, gli, lui, lei, noi, voi, ci, vi, loro (the disjunctive pronouns, used after prepositions, etc., do not differ in English from the simple direct object forms).

(The commands are still executed as above):

—I am going to distribute these pencils: one to you, one to him, one to her; one to myself.

—Louis, give me a command; give him a command; give her a command; give yourself a command.

—Attention! Charles, give her a blue bead! Mary, give him a red bead!

—Alfred, give a white bead to me; give me also a yellow bead!

Demonstratives for persons (questi, costui, colui; the second person, "that one near you," is lacking in English, which also fails to distinguish between persons and things and between genders).

When the distinctions in space represented by these pronouns have been taught as above the children read and execute as follows:

Distribute the pronouns to different children in the class; questi, "this one (near me)," costei (feminine); costui, "that one (near you)," costei (fem.); colui, "that one (over there)," colei (fem.); when the children are in their proper places, give to each child a different command.

—Call to you a boy and a girl, and then command: that one (costui) go and get a case; that one (costei) go and get a counter; those (costoro) keep far away and preserve complete silence.

—Point to two children, one standing near you and one far away; then command: that one (colui) go and fetch an armchair for that one (fem. costei) and a chair for this one (questo); then have him return to his place. Then have all the children execute the commands which those (costoro) will now give.

In case the class is made up entirely of girls or entirely of boys, the children find considerable amusement in trying to imitate the manners of whichever opposite sex is missing.

Demonstratives of things (questo, cotesto, quello, ciò, ne); here also English has no pronoun of the second person (that near you), nor does it possess the general indefinite ciò (referring to a general idea: that (ciò) is true).

When the meaning of these words, in terms of space location, has been taught, the children execute as follows:

—You children divide into three groups; then go and occupy three different places; change places as follows: you leave that (cotesto) and occupy that over there; the others leave that (quello) and occupy this (questo).

—Point out various objects, saying: This is my slate; that one is yours, that is hers, and this one is his.

—Point at the different seats, saying: Here are our places, that is mine and this is yours. Those over there are theirs.

—Pass around little baskets, saying: This is my basket. Whose is that? Is that yours? Is this hers? Are these ours? Is this one his?

We dealt with the relatives only incidentally in the analyses (Group C above); we do not treat them here, postponing the study of them in detail to the chapter on sentence-analysis.

Paradyms

In teaching the declension of the pronouns we use the method employed by us in teaching all inflections: bundles of cards, of which one group is tied separately and serves as a guide. The child arranges the cards on the table, working first on the guiding group and putting the pronouns in order of persons: first, second, third.

Agreement of Pronoun and Verb

The cards given to the child for this work are green for the personal pronoun subjects, and red for the verb forms of the three simple tenses, present, past, and future. There are, for Italian, three groups corresponding to the three conjugations: amare, temere, sentire. The child's work is to place the pronouns in the proper order of person (first, second, third, singular and plural) and to put after each pronoun the corresponding verb form. Each child corrects his work by his own sense of the language; however, the teacher looks it over to verify it. The resulting exercises when correctly performed are as follows:

FOR ENGLISH

The child can shuffle his cards in various ways, mixing the verb forms of the three different Italian verbs, or the four tense forms of the English verb; passing then to a reconstruction of the different tenses according to the pronouns, the order of which has by this time become familiar to him.

The next step is to conjugate properly.

Conjugations of Verbs

In our material we offer (for Italian) the conjugation of the two auxiliary verbs (essere "to be," avere "to have") and the model verbs of the first, second and third conjugations. The colors used for the five verbs are all different, yellow for essere "to be," black for avere "to have," pink for amare "to love," green for temere "to fear," light blue for sentire "to hear." Each card has both pronoun and verb form. This is not only to simplify and expedite the exercise but also to make sure of auto-exercise, since the pronoun guides the order of the forms in each tense. These verb forms of a given verb preceded by the pronouns are, accordingly, made into a little package. Here, however, the groups are not so simple as in other cases. For the verb, the cards are kept in a sort of red envelope tied with a ribbon. The infinitive of the verb is written on the outside of the envelope, which, though very simple, is most attractive. When the whole verb is wrapped in its package and tied with the ribbon, it forms a small red prism of the following dimensions: cmm. 35 X 4 X 5.5. On untying the ribbon and opening the envelope the child finds inside ten little "volumes" with red covers. These volumes represent the moods of the verb and they have the following titles inscribed on the first page:

To facilitate replacing these materials in an orderly way and to be sure that this order is recognized, the child finds in the corner of each envelope a Roman numeral (I, II, III, IV, V); and besides that, an Arabic numeral indicating the number of tenses in the given mood. On opening the little volume and taking off the cover we find many other tiny volumes with red covers. These are the tenses. In the middle of each cover is written the name and, to one side, the number indicating the relative position of the tenses in the following manner: the simple tense is marked with the letter S and the compound tense with the letter C. The titles, then, of the eight booklets contained in the little volume for a given mood are:

Finally, on opening each of these little booklets (which, by the way, are 3.5 X 4 cmm. and only a bare millimeter thick) we have the cards with the verb forms preceded by the corresponding pronoun.

This rather resembles the famous egg in which a number of smaller and smaller eggs were enclosed. For this beautiful package forming as a whole the entire conjugation of the verb contains the booklets of the different moods, which in their turn contain the smaller booklets of the tenses. The orderly enumeration of the moods and tenses, together with the pronouns which serve to show the order of the verb forms, allows the child to conjugate the entire verb by himself and to study the classification of the different forms that make it up. In fact the children need no help in this exercise. Once they have this attractive, complicated, and mysterious little red package, they evolve on their little tables in an orderly way the entire conjugation of the verb. Having learned the verb forms little by little they shuffle the cards of the different tenses in various ways and then try to put them in their regular order. At length they are able to shuffle all the cards in the entire verb as the children in the "Children's House" did with the sixty-four colors; and to reconstruct correctly the whole conjugation by tense and by mood. They themselves finally ask to write the verb and they prepare of their own accord new booklets writing out the new verbs as they meet them.

For this purpose we have included in our materials many booklets likewise covered in red and filled with blank cards of a variety of colors. The children themselves fill out these cards in conjugating their new verbs.

The exercises both of working out the conjugation of the verb and of writing out new verbs may be performed at home.

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Analyses

Material: This box has eight compartments for the title cards, which are tan (article), black (noun), brown (adjective), red (verb), violet (preposition), pink (adverb), green (pronoun), and yellow (conjunction). It also has the usual place for the sentences that are to be analyzed. These again are given in groups.

Permutations

The removal of the conjunction destroys the relationship between the words, and this brings out its function in the sentence:

The conjunction must be placed between the words it connects: otherwise the meaning is changed or destroyed:

Lessons and Commands on the Conjunctions

Comparison of Adjectives

A set of exercises may be arranged to bring out the paradymns of comparison by means of suffixes (-er, -est) and of adverbs (more, most). Here the series of cards for the positive adjectival forms are, as usual, brown, the phonograms for -er and -est in lighter and darker shades of brown respectively. The cards for more and most as adverbs are colored pink. When properly arranged, the cards appear as follows:

A second exercise contains cards for each of the forms for these same words. There are three colors: brown, light brown and dark brown (superlative). There are in addition similar cards for the adjectives of irregular comparisons, and three title cards: Positive, Comparative, Superlative. The exercise results as follows:

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