Teachers Learn to Play

The ICONIX Method arranges an environment which allows students to extend natural play into school. Instruction melds seamlessly into natural play. Just as brain development is hierarchical, so is our instructional method.

The ICONIX teacher carefully watches her students. She “Watches and Wonders.” She watches what each child does, and she wonders why they do it. She knows there is No Purposeless Behavior. Before she fully commits to a particular approach for any child, she asks and answers the big question.

What are you doing in there?

She becomes a “Diagnostician of Thinking” as opposed to a deliverer of data. She teaches thinking, later her fully engaged students delight in the discovery of data.

It is paramount for the teacher to accurately assess each child’s state of development to prescribe lessons, in the form of games, that match each student’s developmental need.

Students work on the same lesson material but with differentiated “rules of the game.” Properly differentiated demand is richly rewarded with enthusiastic engagement.

Although we provide rigorous curricular content, ICONIX places more emphasis on developing a child’s capacity to learn. Other schooling environments mistakenly emphasize content over learning capacity. Those who have leaned to learn, master lesson content like a hot knife through butter.