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When I taught children on IEPs, I had regular meetings with parents to update how the students are doing. Can something similar happen for gifted students?

Parents can request a meeting with their child's teacher at any time during the school year to learn about their progress.

Has the district ever considered an Accelerated Middle School?

Tracking students into separate classes and schools for large portions of the school day prevents them from developing the social skills they will need to be successful in the community.

With the implementation of the Honors classes in all subjects, students will be challenged to ensure that needs are being met. In addition, students can take the proficiency based tests to promote up to the next grade level if they pass. Some students at the 5th grade level are already being served and advanced to 6th grade math through blended teaching and a computer program approach.

Does the district plan to challenge all middle school principals to look for students who are advanced?

Identifying academically advanced students who may be gifted is a part of the PLC process (Professional Learning Community). PLC’s review student data to determine how students are progressing toward mastery of the standards. During this review of data, teachers observe which students are not achieving expected mastery, which students are achieving expected mastery, and which students are achieving mastery beyond the expectations. This is also why Wednesday Embedded Collaboration is so important to our student’s achievement.

How realistic is it that five teachers can monitor the entire district? How many times will they actually get to be in the classroom?

While we would love to be able to have an Academic Enrichment Specialist (AES) at each site, at this time we are only able to have five due to state budget cuts. Each Academic Enrichment Specialist will be responsible for three sites. The AES will spend time at each site with the goal of working with teachers in the classroom -- especially those classrooms that have been identified as having a gifted cluster. The AES will also provide support to teachers through adding enrichment opportunities for gifted students to the OERs and providing professional development during faculty meetings and district professional development days.

Who is really going to be monitoring that the teachers are teaching up to the gifted kids?

The principals will be responsible for ensuring that differentiation is occurring within the classroom and that gifted students curriculum is being enriched.

My understanding was that the original proposal included a phased approach, but that is that not what happened?

A phased approach would not provide equity for all of our gifted learners. We must ensure that all students are receiving services in a consistent manner across the district.

In using the clustering model, can a class be devoted to the gifted cluster? I.E. all gifted student/high academic achievers in the same classroom?

Our district does not set up classrooms by ability grouping for many reasons. There are advantages to mixing ability groups such as building self-esteem, identifying gifts in all individuals, and learning and building strengths in all students. Teachers are trained to differentiate with all ability groups and will do a fantastic job extending and challenging all students.

Will students be given tests every year to stay in or out of the gifted program?

No, we will continue to test students in the first grade and once they are identified gifted they will always be tagged as gifted. We will not remove the gifted tag unless a parent requests it.

Who is holding the teachers accountable to teach this? What happens if they say, “No”? Teachers already do not teach district mandated curriculum so how will this be different?

Engaging all students in instruction, optimizing student mastery of standards, and changing instruction based upon results of monitoring are all a part of the teacher evaluation process that is conducted by principals. Teachers who do not meet these standards may be placed on improvement plans where they will receive additional professional development and monitoring. If you have concerns about the curriculum your child is being taught please first contact your child’s teacher with those concerns. If he/she is unable to address those concerns, please contact your building principal.

If there is a concern that a teacher is not serving your child’s needs, then it is suggested to communicate with that particular teacher. All individuals can improve in their specific job skill no matter what occupation a person holds and that is why there is continuous professional development offered to our teachers. Accountability will be present to safeguard any concerns of serving your child plus evaluations that are done throughout the year by the principal. Teachers do have many requirements so support and encouragement is needed to show that we respect their job and the instruction they give to the students.

When will teachers be trained? How will this new curriculum start in August with no summer training?

Some of our teachers are already very adept at differentiating instruction. Professional development in enrichment and differentiating instruction will be ongoing. Teachers new to the district will receive some basic professional development at their orientation before school begins. Teachers will also receive additional professional development during our September professional development days. Specific training dates have already been scheduled for principals, teachers and specialists in August, September and October.

How many gifted kids per class?

It is the expectation that all of our elementary schools will be creating gifted clusters. The number of gifted students per class will vary between 3-8 depending on the site.

Is there any set curriculum to ensure gifted students are being adequately challenged or is this clustering method simply a suggestion to schools and not a regulation that must be followed?

Clustering will be an expectation for all schools. There is a set curriculum that all students learn and our teachers will be differentiating that curriculum for our gifted students by adding the appropriate challenging learning activities and enrichments for them. This will better enable teachers to tailor enrichment to the individual student.

Teachers in the gifted clustered classrooms will work closely with the Academic Enrichment Specialist in facilitating the gifted students learning. Coaching them along in projects based on their own passions and interests. The instructional objective is to make sure all students are learning. Classroom teachers do not want to hold back students who have already mastered certain curriculum standards. They do want to extend learning and critical thinking preparing students for the 21st Century.

Currently, the district is in the process of reviewing a specific curriculum that can be used to enhance the learning of the gifted students in the classrooms.

What is the difference between this new program and the old one?

The old service delivery model was a “pull out model.” While it is our goal to try to do some form of pull out this year, our new model is primarily a “push in” model that will provide students with enrichment opportunities that are anchored in the meaningful context of the curriculum in their classroom. This will enable students to receive enrichment opportunities throughout the instructional day instead of a limited few hours per week.

Will this alienate the children not in the gifted program and cause animosity towards the gifted children?

We will be working with our teachers to better understand the characteristics of gifted learners and to embed social and emotional learning in some of their instruction in order to build a classroom community that fosters the value and acceptance of all students.

By not pulling students out to participate in the gifted class, there will be less animosity and more inclusion in all classroom procedures, meetings, discussions, etc.

Won’t clustering be harder on the teacher and the student by having two types of curriculum in classes?

Clustering will ensure that there are enough students of similar learning abilities in a classroom for the teacher to be able to work with them in a small group. As teachers become proficient with this model, this should actually create a more structured learning environment in which all students are engaged in learning because they are all receiving the appropriate challenging instruction.

Today teachers are serving students ranging from 5-6 different learning levels in one classroom. Clustering will actually help teachers narrow those ranges to 3-4 levels and give them more time to focus on providing adequate instruction within those learning levels. The goal would be for all students who already know the standards being taught not to have to sit and listen or do activities over standards already mastered.

Were all teachers involved in the Winebrenner training?

No, principals chose two teachers from their site to attend the training with them. All gifted teachers were in attendance.

AES and the instructional team will be reading Winebrenner’s clustering model book filled with strategies for teachers to use with their gifted students.

If it takes three years to transition, what happens in years one and two and how will it NOT negatively affect those going into third grade?

During the first year we will focus most heavily on using the Academic Enrichment Specialists to offer professional development and to get into the classrooms and support the teachers as they refine their differentiation skills. This will allow our Academic Enrichment Specialists to impact the most kids. Teachers will monitor student progress and notify the AES if gifted students are not making progress. The AES will assist the teacher in making adjustments within the classroom that will support gifted students and help them to make progress. Our goal is to gradually implement an interest based pullout model, however, we will look at the needs of the teachers and students, and when decided, discern how to implement this model effectively.

Should we be having our children tested to determine if they are gifted in a specific subject or are they already being assessed for this?

As a part of the PLC process, teachers collect data from pre-assessments and make instructional decisions for students based upon that data. We will continue to screen students for giftedness as we have in the past. If a student struggles in a particular area or has learning gaps around a particular topic, the teacher will use that decision to make an appropriate instructional decision regarding the level of rigor that student will encounter in his or her lesson for that particular standard.

How does compacting work? Are you not asking students to teach themselves?

Curriculum compacting involves teaching students the most important parts of the curriculum to allow them to advance as much as possible. It may mean eliminating redundancies as well as unnecessary practice. Some of the middle schools do this with their 6th grade pre-algebra classes where the teacher teaches pre-algebra to the students as well as reviews 6th and 7th grade math standards. When curriculum is compacted, students will still have access to their teacher to work in a small group.

If you are clustering the school into gifted, high achievers, average, need help, and need a lot of help and there are 6-8 gifted student in the cluster, what will the other groups be doing?

In a typical lesson students encounter various elements such as anchor activities, review, assessments, teacher modeling, practice etc. When teachers differentiate instruction they design their instruction so that they can work with one group of students while another group works on an independent, partner, or small group activity without direct instruction from the teacher.

Teachers will design a process for students who are working independently to get help as needed.

What if a school has more than eight gifted students per elementary grade level?

If there are more than eight students per grade level then there will most likely be more than one gifted cluster.

I don’t know of a single school in the district that has only eight gifted students per grade level (the average range is about 15 to 50 depending on site locations). Students will be grouped within clusters of 3-8 within classrooms depending on the volume of gifted students per grade level and those numbers will fluctuate.

How will you ensure that meeting their needs doesn’t just turn into doing more work? How will you ensure that the gifted student doesn’t just become the “helper” in the classroom?

This is the purpose of the new model being implemented to avoid these kinds of things from happening within the classroom. The AES will be coaching the teachers and providing training to help with differentiating the curriculum within the classroom. There will be a variety of options provided for the gifted and/or high achieving learner to select from in order to take their knowledge deeper and not just provide mountains of work to keep them “busy.” Classrooms will be tailored to provide essentials needed for these learners, like interest groups, compacting curriculum and ensuring students are receiving what is best for them.