Montessori Literacy Support Program for Children with ASD

This two-hour workshop will look at how children aged 2 to 5 years with ASD can thrive and be successful in a Montessori prepared environment. It will focus on early signs and challenge, including difficulty with communication and social interaction, restricted and repetitive behaviours and interests, struggles with eye contact, and underlying causes for distress and tantrums.

The presentation will identify effective strategies that can help increase success for children with ASD in the classrooms. It will address barriers to learning, how to prevent meltdowns and the benefits of Montessori techniques to encourage learning & development.

The presentation will also cover how to support literacy skills for children with ASD, emphasising individual learning plans, providing relevant hands-on Montessori materials for language development, modelling to engage children with ASD, breaking down tasks into small and easy steps, and providing opportunities to practice tasks as many times as required.

Bio Notes for Gayathri Thambiah

Gayathri Thambiah is a Montessori consultant with specialised skills and qualifications in Special Education, with qualifications from the London Montessori Centre Teacher Training College and Deakin University. She has extensive experience in supporting young children and adult students with diverse learning needs in different educational settings throughout Australia and New Zealand.

Gayathri collaboratively worked with multidisciplinary teams to plan and develop personalised learning support programs for young children with additional needs to overcome learning challenges. These programs were focused on each child’s unique needs. Gayathri successfully helped these children to achieve very positive outcomes.

She also supported adult students with learning difficulties in the Skills for Education and Employment program at TAFE to learn work readiness skills and also in the Vocational Education and Training program to acquire sector-specific qualifications and to effectively prepare them for suitable employment.