KEP Gifted Overview

KEP Gifted Services Overview

San Antonito’s Kids Enhancement Program (KEP) Gifted Services integrates well-researched, best-practice gifted learning models with our magnet school focus of STEM. The teachers of these services embed critical and creative thinking strategies in lessons and projects that incorporate 21st Century Thinking Skills. Students are challenged through these models and strategies, which are designed to extend and enrich the general education classrooms’ programs of study.

Throughout the school year, and as a student progresses through the grade levels, our KEP includes the following:

• APS GIFTED STRANDS

Self-Understanding

Goal: The gifted student needs to develop a good understanding of his/her exceptionality (i.e. strengths, weaknesses, learning style).

Interpersonal Skills

Goal: The gifted student will use appropriate interpersonal skills to organize and/or work effectively with a group.

Thinking Skills

Goal: The gifted student will use various thinking processes to generate ideas and to solve problems.

Creativity

Goal: The gifted student will apply fluency, flexibility, and risk taking when generating new ideas and products.

Interest Development

Goal: The gifted student will explore areas compatible with educational background, abilities, and career interests.

Communication

Goal: The gifted student will learn to effectively communicate in order to impact interactions with others.

Independence in Learning

Goal: The gifted student will continue to build the skills of a life-long learner.

Advanced Knowledge

Goal: The gifted student will be academically productive at his/her ability level.

• NINE CRITICAL & CREATIVE THINKING STRATEGIES

These nine critical and creative thinking strategies are linked to lessons lessons that are designed to elicit a higher level thinking response in the STEM components.

1. Questioning

Active learners are always questioning. Students who take responsibility for asking their own questions become more productive and engaged in their learning processes. [Metacognition, or thinking about thinking, involves questioning our individual learning processes. Such questioning helps us solve problems by developing, implementing, and evaluating plans of action. Guiding the development of thinking skills in all students empowers them, increases their independence, and helps them develop to their maximum potential. Children always have a wealth of questions – encourage questioning in your child and work with them to find answers.]

2. Fluency, Originality, Flexibility, and Elaboration

Fluency- lots of ideas- Number of ideas you have

Originality- stretching thinking- Ideas that no one else comes up with

Flexibility- new ideas- Different categories for your ideas

Elaboration- adding details- The details you add to your ideas

[When students are able to come up with ideas (fluency), combine ideas in new ways or come up with unusual ideas (originality), then categorize and develop their ideas (flexibility and elaboration), they are more able to make inventive or creative connections between ideas. Students should become comfortable with generating lots of ideas without pre-judgment. The process of suspending judgment is important to brainstorming and maintaining an open mind. Fluency and flexibility open up the thinking of students to consider many possibilities, and originality and elaboration stretch the uniqueness of their thinking. This is a great strategy to use with your children to generate ideas for a family trip, a way to spend the weekend, the best pet for the family, creative solutions to problems that arise, and other situations that lend themselves to multiple ideas for consideration.]

3. Visualization

This strategy opens up student thinking by using sensory information to stimulate imagination with both spoken and written words. [The process of visualization can also help students plan out an experience before execution. Students can “see” roadblocks and problems before encountering them. This strategy helps with planning, goal-setting, and organization. Research studies have shown that visualization greatly increases the level and depth of comprehension of both spoken and written words. Visualization can be a powerful strategy for helping your child set goals, picture the steps that need to be taken, consider alternatives, and visualize a plan to achieve their goals.]

4. Mind Mapping

Mind mapping is a method of visual note taking that helps students organize information in unique and personal ways. [It is appropriate for all students because it helps them retain, remember, and recall information. It also helps students to see the whole picture at once and make connections among related ideas without interruption. As students begin to work with more information in the content areas, this is a key skill which is especially important for visual learners and students who enjoy making connections among ideas. Mind mapping is a lot of fun – you and your child can write a word or draw a circle in the middle of a page. Next, draw lines and new circles to ideas and words or pictures that connect to the original word. For example, maybe your child is interested in space. Together you could create a mind map of all that you know about space and then add things that you want to investigate.]

5. Point of View (POV)

This thinking strategy allows students to explore an idea from multiple perspectives. [This helps to broaden students’ thinking and demonstrates that an idea should be examined from many points of view before an opinion is formed. The discipline of examining an issue from many perspectives will provide students with a good model for open-ended receptive thinking and empathizing with the opinions of others. Everyone has a viewpoint! It is important for children to become comfortable sharing their own viewpoint and listening to and learning from others. Parents can help their children recognize different viewpoints through books and stories or conversations that encourage a discussion of questions that have no definite answers, e.g., what makes a good friend? Another example would be a discussion of a movie that you attend together that might lead to different viewpoints on the theme or message of the movie.]

6. Analogies

Analogies allow students to make connections at a more sophisticated level. This structure for thinking helps students relate material to previously learned concepts as well as generate new comparisons. [A facility for working with analogies gives students a structure for generating creative ideas, seeing complex relationships, and making unusual comparisons. Analogies are fun – how is thinking like a volcano? How is a dandelion like a good book? They stimulate the imagination and lead students to deeper understandings by connecting things that do not always appear connected.]

7. Encapsulation

Encapsulation is the process of stating ideas in a concise, precise form. [It is not a summary and does not involve simply stating the main idea or restating information or opinions.] Encapsulation requires students to synthesize information and nuances in order to capture the essence of an idea, object, or activity, and then communicate their thoughts clearly. [Vanity license plates are an example of encapsulating an idea with letters and symbols – try creating your own with your child!]

8. Decisions and Outcomes

This strategy provides a framework in which students can assess and evaluate a variety of decisions and possible outcomes. [Understanding cause and effect relationships helps students recognize the importance of examining the outcomes of multiple decision options before embarking on a course of action. The concept of examining outcomes is relevant for all students as they learn to consider both short-term and long-range consequences in the decision making process. For example, your child may want to make a purchase. This would be a great time to consider the short term consequences (the purchase may use up all of their savings, they may have to forego other purchases for awhile, etc.) and long-term consequences (it could be less expensive if they wait, a newer, improved model may come on the market, it may be impulse buying and later they may regret spending the money.) These are important considerations for children to think about that will carry on into adult life. This strategy also works well for decisions about what sport to play, whether or not they do their homework, and many others as they realize that all decisions have outcomes that must be considered.]

9. Plus, Minus, Interesting (PMI)

The PMI strategy encourages students to think about many possibilities, and to explore the positive and negative aspects of ideas or activities. PMI encourages students to develop the habit of looking beyond the polarity of “yes or no,” “wrong or right,” “my answer or your answer.” [The goal of PMI is to develop independent thinkers who consider a range of ideas and/or possibilities and see beyond the obvious. The “interesting” category can also include questions. This strategy works well when discussing books, events, family trips, musical instruments or any other ideas that can be considered through the lens of pluses, minuses, and interesting aspects. For example, your child is trying to decide which musical instrument to play. Together you make a chart of the plus, minus, and interesting aspects of each instrument that they are considering. Often the interesting column leads to insights that will help them make a decision.]

• FIVE-STAGE MODEL

Lessons and Projects are structured around our five-stage model, which provides students opportunities to 1. connect content to prior knowledge, 2. Engage in new ideas, 3. Use thinking skills to consider possibilities, 4. Reflect on new learning, and 5. Connect the lesson/project to future learning.

• CURRICULUM MODELS & STRATEGIES

Autonomous Learner Model (ALM)- Through ALM, students will develop responsibility, positive self-esteem, decision-making and problem-solving skills, interpersonal skills, critical and creative thinking skills, and a passion for areas of learning that interest them.

Project-Based Learning- is a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging and complex question, problem, or challenge.

Creative Problem Solving- Creative problem solving (CPS) is a way of solving problems or identifying opportunities when conventional thinking has failed. It encourages students to find fresh perspectives and come up with innovative solutions, so that you can formulate a plan to overcome obstacles and reach your goals.

Hands-on Equations- Hands-on Equations is a powerful whole brain learning program that enables young students to solve equations like 4x + 3 = 3x + 9 in three lessons by applying algebraic legal moves. Students write the steps in a linear fashion to aid explanation of their process and corrections.

Junior Great Books- This high-quality literature program encourages student-centered discussion while providing a superb framework for practicing reading comprehension, critical thinking, and writing. Stories are grouped by key age-appropriate social and emotional themes.

William & Mary Integrated Curriculum Model (ICM)- Jacob’s Ladder targets reading comprehension skills in high ability learners. In the form of three skill ladders connected to individual readings in poetry, myths/fables, and nonfiction, students move from lower order, concrete thinking skills to higher order, critical thinking skills.

SCAMPER- SCAMPER is a mnemonic that stands for: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, Reverse. Students use the tool by asking questions about existing products, using each of the seven prompts above. These questions help them come up with creative ideas for developing new products, and for improving current ones.

Six Hats of Decision Making- Developed by Dr. Edward de Bono, the “Six Thinking Hats” ™ technique is a framework designed to promote holistic and lateral thinking in decision-making and evaluation.

Bloom’s Taxonomy- Bloom's taxonomy is a set of three hierarchical models used to classify educational learning objectives into levels of complexity and specificity. The three lists cover the learning objectives in cognitive, affective and sensory domains.

Costa’s Habit of Mind- The Habits of Mind are an identified set of 16 problem-solving, life-related skills, necessary to effectively operate in society and promote strategic reasoning, creativity, insightfulness, perseverance, and craftsmanship. These provide students with skills to work through real life situations that equip them to respond using awareness (cues), thought, and intentional strategy in order to gain a positive outcome.

Multiple Intelligences- Multiple Intelligences is a theory that says that there are multiple types of human intelligence, each representing different ways of processing information.

Brainstorming- Brainstorming is a group creativity technique by which efforts are made to find a conclusion for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its members.

Philosophy for Kids- Philosophy for Children, sometimes abbreviated to P4C, is a movement that aims to teach reasoning and argumentative skills to children.

Psychology for Kids- Students explore their interests and abilities, find out why they act the way they do, and discover what makes them unique. Psychology for Kids promotes self-discovery, self-awareness, and self-esteem, and empowers students to make good choices.

Interaction Simulations- Students embrace challenging “projects of varying length with components for individual or small group work. They learn time management, dependability, and independence through a wide variety of tasks at different ability in language, math, science and social studies. As students complete their contracts and build their portfolios, they hone their research, art, computer and creative writing skills.”