Columbia County Gifted Program

Columbia County Gifted Program Mission Statement and Beliefs

The Columbia County Gifted Education Program supports the rationale that each student should receive educational experiences appropriate for his/her individual abilities, interests, and learning styles. The program prepares the student to function at the upper limits of personal ability. The Gifted Education Program provides a differentiated curriculum of content, process, skills, and creative expression. We believe gifted students can:

• Develop positive self-concepts relative to their giftedness and interact effectively with other students, peers, and society.
• ​ Employ advanced critical and creative thinking skills to generate products appropriate to their giftedness, using differentiated content and processes.
• Acquire the necessary advanced thinking and self-directed learning skills to become independent creative learners and producers.

Columbia County Gifted Standards

1) Gifted students will develop advanced research skills and methods as they carry out in-depth learning of self-selected topics within the area of study.

2) Gifted students will develop and practice creative thinking and creative problem-solving skills with a variety of complex topics within the area of study.

3) Gifted students will develop and practice critical thinking and logical problem-solving skills in the pertinent academic area.

4) Gifted students will develop advanced communication skills, using new techniques, materials, and formats in the development of products that will be shared with real audiences.

5) Gifted students will develop an understanding of self and how their unique characteristics may influence interactions with others.

Elementary Gifted Delivery Models

HORIZONS PROGRAM - Students in 2nd through 5th grades are served in the Horizons Program. Each elementary school has a gifted specialist who works with gifted students in this pull-out resource setting. The Horizons curriculum has an academic content foundation, but it focuses on interdisciplinary enrichment activities. The content and pacing are differentiated to the degree that activities are more advanced than the regular classroom.

CLUSTER GROUPING - In the cluster grouping model, identified gifted students are placed as a group into an otherwise heterogeneous classroom with a gifted endorsed teacher, rather than being dispersed among all of the classrooms at that grade level. The teacher makes curriculum modifications based upon the advanced learning needs of the students.

COLLABORATIVE MODEL - In the collaborative model, a gifted specialist works with the regular classroom teacher to plan curriculum modifications for the gifted students. Modifications are tailored to the advanced learning needs of the student.