Overview of IUSD’s GATE Programs

I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to thinkabout besides homework. Lily Tomlin as “Edith Ann”

Beth AndrewsTOSA, GATE/APAAS

What does gifted Mean? What does a gifted program look like?

Gifted: innate exceptional ability of a person.

Talented: exceptional performance of a person.

Gifted & Talented: innate exceptional ability and performance of a person.

To be identified GATE (grades 4-8)

CST Score of 460 ELA and 460 Math orScore 95%or above on OLSAT orQualify on approved IQ test given by a licensed psychologist

GATE Program- (grades 4-8)GATE Cluster at each grade level (4-8)

APAAS Alternative Program for Academically Accelerated Students (4-6)Honors or GATE-cluster (middle school)

IUSD’s GATE Program

What Matters Most Is that each student grows as a responsible thinker, wise consumer of ideas, and innovative contributor.

So that he/she may improve

conditions for those who share the journey through life.

Teachers play an important role in ensuring that each student becomes all he or she can become.

How do we meet the needs of all of our students?

We Respond to• Student readiness• Student interests• Student learning

style

To Ensure Each Student

• Is appropriately challenged, and

• Can overcome learning obstacles

• Will learn to learn

is a teacher’s response to learner’s needs

Differentiation of Instruction

Guided by general principals of differentiation, such as

respectful tasks

flexible grouping

On-going assessment and adjustment

Content ProductProductProcess

Learning ProfilesLearning ProfilesInterests

According to student’s

Readiness

Differentiated instruction centers around three key curricular elements – content, process, and product.

Based on C. Tomlinson, 2000

Differentiation In differentiated classrooms, teachers use the core content to provide specific ways for each individual to learn as deeply as possible and as quickly as possible, knowing that each student’s road map for learning is unique and may not be identical to anyone else's.

Teachers work to ensure that each student is held to high standards, and must think and work harder than they meant to; achieve more than they thought they could; and come to believe that learning involves effort, risk, and personal triumph. (adapted from Carol Ann Tomlinson)

Content

What the student needs to learn.

Instructional concepts should be broad based, and all students are given access to the same core content. The content’s complexity is adapted to students’ readiness, abilities, and interests. Content is varied through the presentation of subject matter ( i.e., textbooks, lecture, demonstrations, taped texts) to best meet students’ needs.

Process

Activities in which the student makes sense of content. Examples of differentiating process include scaffolding, flexible grouping, interest centers, varying pace of instruction, varying duration of time for a student to master content, and encouraging an advanced learner to pursue a topic in greater depth.

Product

Culminating projects that ask students to apply and extend what they have learned.

Products provide students with different ways to demonstrate their knowledge using various levels of difficulty, through group or individual work, and various means of scoring.

Characteristics of Gifted Students

• Behaviors• Learning characteristics• Emotional needs• Social needs• Concerns

When the Curriculum is not Challenging...

• Frustration and anxiety

• Perfectionism

• Lowered academic self-concept

• Underachievement or Non-production

Asynchronous or uneven development

• creates difficulties in relating to both themselves and others.

• may be more likely to view themselves based on their relative weaknesses.

• show more perfectionist behaviors.

• the lack of educational fit can also create adjustment or emotional difficulties.

DEFINE UNDERACHIEVEMENT

Is Underachievement A Perception?

Underachievement is an adult term used to describe a set of troublesome child behaviors that don't match some preconceived notions of how high a gifted child is supposed to perform. (Delisle)

• Students must value academics.• Students must be self-regulators.• Students must believe they have the skills.

Lessons on Seeking a Balance

1) Seeking a balance between who kids are and what they can do. They possess much more than just their brain.

As Dumbledore said to Harry in Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets, “It’s our choices, Harry, that show who we are, far more than our abilities.”

2) Need to achieve some sense that life has winning and losing in it; both shape us to be who we are.

We do them a favor when we incorporate things that are too hard and with natural loss so that it becomes a part of the woodwork of life for them to help them with that balance.

Lessons on Seeking a Balance3) Seeking the balance between quality and compulsion. Quality is good, but there’s a fine line between coming out nicely and the need to be the best.

Being the best will hinder their ability of being their best.

“A champion is someone who wins like they’re used to it, and loses like they like it.” (From an Olympic coach).

Learning to continue to compete means understanding that you are going to lose sometimes.

Excellence is not something that you can achieve and hang on to forever; it‘s a quest that involves ups and downs.

4) Seeking the balance of how they are alike, and how they are different, from other people.

In showing them that they have unique needs, we need to also show them that everyone has special needs.

This helps them to understand both their uniqueness as individuals, (particular talents they have, particular hurts that they have), but to realize that all human beings are on a quest where we are all trying to have our dreams realized.

Seeking a Balance continued

In the end, all learners need our energy, our heart, and our mind. They have that in common because they are young humans. How they need us however, differs. Unless we understand and respond to those differences, we fail many learners. Carol Tomlinson*