Nine Elements of Learning

1. Non threatening environment: Students are free from anxiety about negative disciplining and experience a sense of well-being as they learn.
    
2. Meaningful Content: Teachers select topics and themes that address standards across various learning areas and engage students meaningfully.
    
3. Choices: Students are given opportunities to select assignments that meet individual learning needs and interests.
    
4. Adequate Time: The schedule provides ample and flexible time for thorough exploration.
    
5. Enriched Environment: The school offers an interesting and inviting setting, with emphasis on objects from the real world for students to see and touch.
    
6. Collaboration: Students work together to enhance achievement and build social skills.
    
7. Accurate and timely Feedback: Students and parents receive an accurate feedback, both immediate and cumulative.
    
8. Mastery at the Application Level: Students internalize deeply what they learn and have opportunities to apply their learning to real-world situations.
    
9. Movement to Enhance Learning: Movement activates learning, therefore there is a high degree of flexibility and fluidity in classroom settings.
    

In the classroom, teachers use instructional strategies based on these elements. For example, they develop learning activities that address multiple intelligences (Choice), organize students in small groups instead of rows (Collaboration), and provide opportunities for students to create real products for real audiences (Mastery on the Application Level). Each teacher also develops an interdisciplinary curriculum organized around themes. The theme provides an overarching structure tied to an important concept that helps students see patterns and make connections among disparate facts and ideas.