Provides a warm, nurturing environment where students feel comfortable being with other creative and/or bright students like themselves.
Offers semi-private groups that never exceed four students, so each student receives a great deal of attention.
Assumes that teachers can learn to facilitate active learning while maintaining structure and organization.
Introduces an interdisciplinary program that naturally integrates history, visual arts, science, and computers in a three-year progressive course of study for academic enrichment.
Supplies students with state-of-the-art materials and manipulatives from computers, animation equipment, drafting boards, weaving looms to architectural tables.
Acknowledges that students learn in different ways.
Encourages the teacher to apply open-ended questioning techniques with more than one answer to a given problem.
Generates a participatory exchange where concept, process, and product are balanced, based on a highly structured scope and sequence.
Guides students through a series of thematic instruction exercises, through direct hands-on, real-life experiences.
Recognizes that students’ active participation in discovering content creates enthusiasm. This, in turn, can motivate students to master content.
Respects the active learning method because it helps teachers identify each student’s specific strengths. Once these strengths are recognized, the teacher can help the student recognize and build upon them.
Students as Leaders: Enhancing Communication and Speaking Skills
Promotes an environment where students feel comfortable voicing their opinion and embarking on conversations with their peers and teacher.
Invites risk-taking behavior through an accepting atmosphere where the powers of thought are respected and critiqued.
Uses many forms of communication to generate creative thinking, problem-posing, and problem-solving so that students’ cognitive strengths of higher-level thinking are tapped.
Presupposes that mastery of content enhances the self and develops self-esteem.
Maintains that student strengths are a classroom resource, where success breeds success.
