The Ten Essentials

Odyssey's Ten Essentials

1. Team Teaching

When teachers collaborate, students receive many benefits.
Two or more teachers working together create the opportunity to pool
personal and instructional resources.
Increases creativity and ability to meet the needs of individual students.
Allows students to be in flexible groups and teams for art, math, literature
and many components of their day.
Teachers flow between groups, too, allowing them to teach to their
strengths.

2. Multi-age Classrooms

Blended grade levels allow students to progress at their unique
developmental rate.
Student developmental rates are often very different than their
chronological rate.
For math, reading and literature, students are placed in groups according to
their assessed needs.
For all other subjects, students work in mixed-age teams, which include both
older and younger students at a variety of academic levels.

3. Cooperative Learning

Research shows that cooperation is more effective than competition in
improving academic achievement.
Provides the opportunity for older students to learn and practice leadership
helping younger children who look up to them.
Students benefit from:
- Constructing knowledge together as a team.
- Contributing at their unique level.
- Leading in their areas of strength.
- Receiving assistance in areas where they are less confident.
Non-threatening environment supports problem solving, and effective
communication and collaboration.

4. Community Support

Odyssey welcomes and encourages parent and community involvement in many
ways both during and outside of the school day.
Teachers, students, and families join together to foster learning, creating
a community school.
Parents participate in the way each chooses—everyone is needed and valued.
This approach creates a strong and engaged learning community.
Parents connect to what their children are experiencing.
Dedicated community support helps teachers achieve their educational goals.
All students feel supported by a group of adults who care about
them.

5. Differentiated Instruction

To meet all the needs of a diverse student population, The Odyssey Program
differentiates instruction.
Individual students learn in a wide variety of ways and have different
interests.
Instructions reaches out to students unique learning styles, interests,
readiness, and needs in order to create the best learning environment possible.
All learning is designed to use scaffolding activities, engaging students’
areas of strength (i.e., visual, auditory, kinesthetic) and moving them to
mastery of areas of need.

6. Open-Ended Curriculum

Our learning format has no bottom or top.
Curriculum fosters the development of creative and critical thinking skills
in all subject areas.
Students at all academic levels experience much growth during the school
year.
Gifted students are challenged, while those needing to master the basics are
supported toward success.
Curriculum helps students view learning as an ongoing, life-long process.
All students are encouraged to deepen their learning through
extensions.

7. Theme-Based Learning

The Odyssey Program is based on integrated curriculum and enrichment
Centered around historical themes based on Oregon learning benchmarks.
Prominent American educator Dr. Mary Beth Klee argues that, "For too many
years we have undershot with America’s elementary school children.
"They come to us with their fresh minds, their keen curiosity, their
enthusiasm for learning, and for far too long we have served up pabulum.
"They come to us longing to connect with the broader world, the world they
do not know, but hunger to know."
In our program, we strive to satisfy this "hunger."

8. Enrichment

Hands-on learning activities meet the needs of a wide range of students and
appeal to their specific interests.
Art, writing, science, language arts, and social studies are integrated into
the curriculum for each unit.
Singing, dancing, and drama are emphasized in a culmination performance for
each unit.
Extended field studies culminate learning each year in grades 3-8.

9. Integrated Curriculum

Education is more effective when students know why they are learning
something, and are offered a context for new information.
Studying rivers, mountains, and rock formations becomes much more meaningful
when a child also learns how this topography affected Lewis and Clark’s
expedition, or the lifestyles of the Northwest Indian tribes.
Integrated study at The Odyssey Program mean that subjects will naturally
flow together.
Students won’t have to stop thinking about science and start thinking about
spelling just because a bell has rung.
Students might not realize what "subject" they learned on a particular day,
but will be able to describe a wealth of knowledge gained and tell a
fascinating story of why it is important.

10. Interactive Learning

In this educational model, no child is a passive learner.
During each unit of study, students take on the identities and lifestyles of persons from the theme period.
Students wear the clothes, learn the music, collect the artifacts, and engage in interactive simulation activities where learning comes alive.
This approach appeals to the imagination of every child.
Learning is never isolated and abstract, but always meaningful and exciting.