Programs

This K-8 program turns every classroom into a theatre.

The entire class acts out fairy tales, folk tales, , fables, legends, adventure stories, mysteries …all in play form. Every student is assigned a role.

Students love our plays so much, they often continue to practice them at lunchtime, recess, and at home with their families.

The program builds reading fluency, comprehension and verbal skills.

Best of all, it encourages children to read more. After acting in one of our plays, children often reach for the book form of the story.

The literary version of our plays program, our other Bringing Classics to Life program brings the magic of reading entire novels into your classroom community.

We read classics from a wide range of cultures and periods. These include: Arabian Nights, Robin Hood , Charlotte’s Web, Esperanza Rising, Little Women, The Prince and the Pauper, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Persepolis, Maus, A Tale of Two Cities, Romeo and Juliet and more.

As the entire class works its way through the novel, discussing each page as we go, every student grows as a reader, thinker and classroom community member. Each grade typically reads two full-length novels per school year.

This program is especially well-suited to students in the testing grades of 3-8 because it develops close reading and literary analytical skills.

Test Prep will never be the same. Or as much fun.

Athena’s Test Prep program prepares students in grades 3-8 for success in the ELA state tests. But it does so in an innovative way: through the reading of 3-5 texts on the same topic. In the process, students become much more familiar with the vocabulary, concepts and ideas at the heart of a topic as diverse as Jellyfish,Catherine of Aragon, Unicorns, and Beekeeping, just to name a few.

Most test prep programs involve reading a series of unrelated passages. Ours allows students to select topics that interest them and build subject knowledge while also building test-taking skills. This is far more effective in building engagement, word knowledge, and effective reading strategies.

Whether used in an entire classroom, in small groups or in independent practice, Athena’s test prep helps students fine-tune their skills in reading comprehension, learn multiple choice question strategies, and master writing short and long responses.

In the process, students lengthen their attention span, focus more closely on what they read and apply the power of positive thinking to test-taking. And they learn that knowledge, not information, is power.

Story-based problems based in fairy tales make Math fun for students in grades K-5. Students use scenarios from fairy tales and flex their problem-solving skills to help their favorite characters and bring villains to justice.

Students in K-3 love to pretend to be shopkeepers. In this Math Fluency program, early elementary students run a store in which they are constantly challenged to make change, add up items, calculate tax and subtract to figure out profit margins. Inspired by the 1980s spoof on the First CityWide Change Bank.