Menu of Student-Centered Strategies
The Idea Institute specializes in creating classrooms and learning experiences that empower students to use their creativity, collaborate effectively, and solve problems in their local and global communities.
We provide ongoing professional development on a wide array of progressive tools and strategies, such as:
Creative & High-Quality Assessments
Participants will explore a variety of assessments, beyond quizzes and tests, that provide students with opportunities to demonstrate and apply their learning
Fostering Communication and Collaboration in a Classroom
Learn strategies and protocols that elicit wider student participation and equitable collaboration
Interdisciplinary Learning
Discover ways to create meaningful bridges between different disciplines of your school, where both disciplines are enriched.
Judaic Studies in the Makerspace
Learn how to bring a maker mindset to your JS classroom and/or how to bring JS into your school’s makerspace
Judaic Studies & the Arts
Learn how to incorporate visual arts into your JS classroom and/or how to bring JS into your school’s art department
Ready-to-go PBL Tools
Learn a variety of PBL tools and strategies that are ready to implement and enrich your classroom tomorrow.
Student Voice and Choice in the Classroom
Learn how to incorporate student’s interests, ideas, and questions into both the planning of lessons and units as well as the daily dynamic of the classroom
In addition, The Idea Institute has partnered with schools and organizations to provide thought leadership, resources, and ongoing support on the implementation of pedagogies, including:
Problem-Based Learning
Learn how to center curriculum standards around a communal or global problem that students must use knowledge, skills, and complex, critical thinking to try and solve
Passion-Based Learning
Learn how to integrate students’ passions into academic learning and/or to create a classroom where students can pursue them freely alongside their peers
Inquiry-Based Learning
Discover how to center learning around students’ questions, how to foster questioning in the classroom, and how to allow for different lines of inquiry to be developed there
Project-Based Learning
Learn how to center curricular standards around questions that spark students’ interest and that require them to engage in a process of collaboration, communication and iteration before using knowledge, skills and creativity to create products or events
Design-Thinking
Learn the elements of Design Thinking and how to apply them in the classroom
Understanding by Design
Learn how to design curriculum and standards using the UbD framework for crafting essential questions, selecting curriculum content and skills, and creating assessments that show students have acquired and know how to transfer and make meaning of knowledge