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.