ABOUT SOUTHSIDE MONTESSORI SCHOOL

Southside Montessori Pre & Primary School is situated near the Salt Pan at Riverwood, NSW. The School was founded in 1979 to provide quality education to the children of southern Sydney in the Montessori tradition.

The School is organised into Stages 1, 2, and 3 catering for 3-12 year olds serving children at each separate stage and plane of development. Children learn at their own pace with a Director and Assistant in each classroom

Our Montessori programme is child-centered, teacher-facilitated, and suitable across all socio-economic and cultural boundaries. The needs of the child are paramount. We adhere to Montessori's maxim, Follow the Child.

CURRICULUM

Southside Montessori Curriculum for Stage 1 to Stage 3 fulfils the NSW Board of Studies requirements for Primary Schools.

EDUCATION METHOD

Child-centered, teacher-facilitated Montessori programme based on mutual respect and co-operation.

Individual programme for each child based on the child's progress and interests, considering each child's style of learning.

Professionally-trained Montessori educators who nurture each student's intellectual, emotional, social and physical potential.

Carefully prepared classrooms to meet the developmental needs of the child at each particular age.

Non-competitive environment that promotes:

• independence
• initiative and self motivation
• self-confidence and self-esteem
• joy of work and a love of learning
• creative intelligence and imagination
• co-operation with others and a sense of community
• a sense of responsibility for themselves and their action

ABOUT MARIA MONTESSORI

Maria Montessori (1870-1952) was the first woman in Italy to qualify as a physician. She developed an interest in the diseases of children and in the needs of those said to be 'ineducable'.

Maria Montessori developed a teaching program that enabled 'defective' children to read and write. She sought to teach skills not by having children repeatedly try it, but by developing exercises that prepare them. These exercises would then be repeated: looking becomes reading; touching becomes writing.

The success of her method then caused her to ask questions of 'normal' education and the ways in which failed children. Maria Montessori had the chance to test her programme and ideas with the establishment of the first Casa dei Bambini (Children's House) in Rome in 1907.

This house and those that followed were designed to provide a good environment for children to live and learn. An emphasis was placed on self-determination and self-realisation.

This entailed developing a concern for others and discipline, and to do this children engaged in exercises de la vie pratique (exercise in daily living). These and other exercises were to function like a ladder - allowing the child to pick up the challenge and to judge thier progress. 'The essential thing is for the task to arouse such an interest that it engages the child's whole personality' (Maria Montessori - The Absorbent Mind: 206).

This connected with a further element in the Montessori programme - decentring the teacher. The teacher was the 'keeper' of the environment. While children got on with their activities, the task was to observe and to intervene from the periphery.