Essential Learning Skills and Six Strands

At Odyssey School, we recognize nine essential learning skills and six strands for understanding, mastery, and success in lifelong learning; these are essential learning skills and they include:

• self-organization

I can organize my things and my thoughts.

• thinking and working creatively and critically

I can ask questions and suggest solutions.

• collaborating with others

I can work together with others.

• communicating effectively

I can communicate my feelings, needs, and ideas.

• learning independently

I can work independently.

• using appropriate resources to access and apply knowledge

I can use resources well to learn and share knowledge.

• taking risks to succeed; creating options and making choices

I can take risks to succeed.

• creating options and making choices

I can create options and make choices to succeed.

• exhibiting authentic self-confidence

I am confident in who I am, what I know, and what I think.

Six Developmental Strands

In addition to the essential learning skills, six strands make up the geometry of Odyssey’s Integral Education. The interweaving of six strands, or aspects, of the individual includes the physical, emotional, mental, moral, and aesthetic. These are inspired by Howard Gardener’s Multiple Intelligence Theory.

• The aesthetic strand nourishes a continuous program from preschool through high school which cultivates the imagination and develops aesthetic literacy.
• The emotional strand assists the child in understanding and communicating in the world of feelings.
• The mental strand attends to the skills and knowledge that are useful to the student as a lifelong learner.
• The moral/social strand supports ecological thinking about the connections within all creation.
• The physical strand nurtures the development and the care and respect of the physical body— as well as attends to the biology of learning.
• The spiritual strand supports the child’s recognition and communication of his or her own truth, the ability to live from the heart, and the exercising of her or his faculty of creative imagination.

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