Some of the reasons we at Athena love the Montessori Method include: 1. A beautifully prepared work environment where students feel comfortable and have freedom within limits to choose their work. Children can practise an activity as much as they like to gain confidence with the activity. The teacher will guide them to enjoy new and different activities so that they can develop in all areas. 2. A big focus on hands-on learning, including many practical life skills, such as sewing, caring for their classroom, caring for plants, cleaning, and returning things to their correct place. Children learn through experience rather than being told. They see for themselves how things work. They learn to observe. 3.The "work cycle", which includes selecting an activity, doing the activity and carefully returning it to its correct place to make it a completed cycle.  This instils a great life habit for students while maintaining a nice orderly environment to encourage students to focus.  This repeated and self-chosen engagement with the material, the lack of interruption, and the requirement to set up the material and put it away afterwards, are key elements aimed at developing the child’s concentration. 4. Observation. This is key for both the student and the educator. Students use specialist Montessori equipment to observe through all of the 5 senses. The teacher takes time each day to observe their students and see where they are really at, so that they can guide them and support them in choosing their own activity. 5. The use of phonics. There is beautiful equipment, including sandpaper letters and the movable alphabet, which make learning phonics interesting, gradual and hands-on! 6. The prepared Adult. The teacher is a guide in a Montessori house of children. This entails physical, spiritual and intellectual preparation of the adult, so that they are able to guide students. Observation is a key assessment tool in the Montessori method. The prepared adult must therefore know that they are being observed at all times too, and thus set a good example of grace and courtesy. Looking for a gentle transition into the school environment? Our Montessori Prep class will prepare your child for Kindergarten. Limited Spaces Available!

Is a person’s IQ fixed or can it be improved? That has been a debate for decades. Some firmly believe you are born with a predestined IQ and some believe you can improve upon it. What does evidence say? It has been found that vocabulary has a direct correlation to IQ. So, interestingly enough, what determines IQ is actually literacy. Literacy is knowing the definitions of words in all their contexts. Study Technology improves intelligence measurably by the mere fact that it increases literacy. Reference: Effective Education Publishing, a division of Applied Scholastics International *Study Technology: It is an applied understanding of the learning process itself. By understanding how to learn, and what specific barriers prevent understanding, students discover that any lack of success in learning can be traced back to causes they can control.

Firstly, what is Phonics? A method of teaching people to read by correlating sounds with symbols in an alphabetic writing system. from Greek phōnē "sound, voice" Phonics teaches the code that connects written and spoken language, so words can become decodable. When it is explicitly taught, students can read infinite words rather than just those words that they have learned. This takes some time to teach all the letters and all the letter combinations BUT after they know the code they can read (decode) any word they see. Phonics serves as a foundational skill that empowers students to become independent readers, allowing them to tackle a broad range of materials with greater confidence. Phonics instruction focuses on teaching students the relationship between letters and their corresponding sounds. By learning the sounds of individual letters and letter combinations (phonemes), students develop decoding skills. This allows them to sound out and recognize unfamiliar words, improving their ability to read new words independently. Phonics provides a systematic and logical way for students to understand the alphabetic principle, the idea that letters represent sounds. Interestingly in most schools a mixture of phonics and sight words is taught and any students that have trouble (which is a growing number) are put into remedial phonics lessons! So why don’t they just teach phonics from the start? Many teachers were not taught themselves through phonics, so they understand parts of it and they teach those parts but not a complete systematic phonics program like we do at Athena. Having the bit and piece approach can be ok for some students… BUT in reality, with complete systematic phonics instruction, all students thrive! From a *Study Technology perspective, Phonics, when taught correctly, is applying the correct gradient to learning how to read, as well as actually defining the letters and groups of letters and sounds they make. Personally, I have taught hundreds how to read using phonics. They have been adults who failed school, people learning English as a second or third language, Kindergarten kids, kids who are older and have transferred to our school or teenagers who have dropped out of school because they “couldn’t learn”. Their problem was that they didn’t understand the letters and what they signify. Phonics is a key part of reading literacy. It makes the difference in the success rate. At Athena, students who start our Reading Program from Kindy or Prep constantly read above their grade level. However, phonics is not the only part of reading that is important. Reading literacy includes vocabulary, fluency and comprehension taught alongside explicit phonics instruction. Phonics helps students build a strong foundation in spelling. Understanding the phonetic structure of words enables students to break down and spell words by applying the rules of phonics. This knowledge also aids in developing phonemic awareness, which is the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words. Improved spelling and decoding skills contribute to overall reading fluency and comprehension. There is also the benefit of students who natively speak other languages that are also considered phonetic, such as Spanish, Italian, Finnish or even French. Students learn to read English through phonetic instruction and then they naturally apply this to the texts in other languages. Sarah Matara Principal The Athena School 22 November 2023 The Athena School Alphabet Chart uses the phonics approach to teaching reading. *Study Technology: It is an applied understanding of the learning process itself. By understanding how to learn, and what specific barriers prevent understanding, students discover that any lack of success in learning can be traced back to causes they can control. Reference: Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation. (2017). Effective Reading Instruction in the Early Years of School. NSW Department of Education.