At 11 years old and in Year 5, Ellen is already studying well beyond her school grade and building the kind of confidence that comes from persistence, practice, and progress.
Ellen first began Kumon when she was in Prep, after her mum enrolled her because she was finding both English and maths difficult. Her older sister was already studying Kumon and had found it very helpful, which encouraged Ellen’s family to begin the same journey with her.
Since then, Ellen has made strong progress in both subjects. Today, she is studying Kumon Maths at Level M, studying geometric figures and equations, trigonometric ratios and functions, and Kumon English at Level I, where she restructures and summarises paragraphs.
Her advanced Kumon study is already making a real difference at school. Ellen takes part in her school’s acceleration programme, where selected students move beyond year-level work and study more advanced maths.
“I feel proud and happy,” Ellen says about studying so far ahead
Looking ahead, Ellen has set clear goals for herself. She would also like to complete the full Kumon programme. Her motivation has come in large part from her older sister, whose achievements inspired her from a young age.
Outside of study, Ellen enjoys keeping active through netball and sailing. She also sees a strong connection between Kumon and her sport. The maths and thinking skills she has developed through Kumon help her understand strategy, angles and problem-solving in both activities.
“The maths, it helps me with the strategies in sailing and netball,” Ellen explains.
In sailing, she uses that thinking to work with wind direction and bearings, while in netball she applies it when thinking about angles, passing and teamwork.
Ellen is already thinking ahead to the future as well. She would like to become an architect because she is fascinated by shapes, dimensions and the mathematics involved in designing buildings. She believes the advanced maths she is learning now through Kumon will help her later in life, especially in understanding complex concepts and applying them in real-world situations.
“I want to be in architecture, and to calculate dimensions, you need actual hard maths,” Ellen says. “For example, the shapes, the area and diameter and the volume of shapes that are hard to calculate, you can put it on a Cartesian plane and use calculus to integrate the final sums.”