Cowles Montessori School Crier

Week of December 11th

Cowles Montessori School Mission

"Together we celebrate diversity, respect, and the love for learning through the Montessori Method. Our environment nurtures and prepares the child for a global community."

Important Dates to Remember!

CMPG Meeting - Monday, December 11th - 6:00p.m. Cowles Library

CMPG Board Agenda: 25th Anniversary T-Shirt update, Holiday Bonanza Update, Proposed by-law change to elections

Winter Break Begins - Friday, December 22nd-January 2nd (No school for students)
Professional Development Day - Monday, January 22nd (No school for students)

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Principal's Message for Tonight's CMPG Meeting

Highlights from 2017
A look ahead at 2018
Walking School Bus Update
Funding Requests

Where is the Pink Tower? Find out next week:)

From the Desk of Principal Johnson

There is a high degree of emphasis on Literacy in society and in schools. The Montessori Education prepares students to become proficient and thriving readers in the following ways:

Unlike language, there is no innate “reading circuit” in the brain. Reading requires specific training to connect two different brain regions: the object recognition system, which allows us to identify objects and faces, and the language circuit, which enables us to learn any language.

Montessori provides auditory training through spoken language, reading aloud, language games, and sensorial materials to help develop what researchers call phonemic awareness – awareness of sounds in spoken language without any visual cue of letters. Phonemic awareness is necessary for later reading skills.
Research shows that mapping sounds to individual letters leads to better reading. Research also shows that learning letter sounds through touch rather than just seeing how a letter is written leads to better decoding and later reading skills.
The visual system of beginning readers sees words as if they are whole objects; thus it is necessary to train the object recognition system for visual acuity. Montessori does this.

It is our goal to foster the love for learning through the Montessori Method to produce confident readers and thinkers who thrive in the global community.
Sincerely,
Principal Johnson
Source: The Montessori White Papers: Montessori and Creativity by Laura Flores Shaw, 2016