Identification
The Chippewa Falls Area Unified School District works to assist teachers address the needs of all learners. We do this by using strong universal curriculum and effective instructional strategies with the entire classroom. We also use universal screeners to help assist in identification of student academic and behavioral needs.
Teachers have collaborative teams in their building which look at student work, scores, and skills in order to help better meet student needs. When a teacher tries several ways to differentiate instruction for advanced learners in the classroom and they still feel that they are not meeting the student's needs, they contact the gifted resource specialist and ask for assistance.
The gifted specialist gets more background from the student and parents using targeted screeners and interviews as well as looking at student work and observations. After this information is gathered, a building team meets to make plans on how to address the specific needs of the student. The plan gets implemented, then is monitored and reviewed. These plans are flexible and different for every child.
For a detailed explanation of the process, click on Presentation of Identification Process. Below is the Chippewa Falls Unified School District's process of addressing student needs.
CFSD Gifted Identification Process Final.pdfThese are the five areas of gifted and talented that are recognized in the nation, state and Chippewa Falls. Programming for the students identified in these areas will be provided in a variety of ways.
Areas of Giftedness Characteristics.pdfReprinted with permission of the National Association for Gifted Children, www.nagc.org
If you want a deeper understanding of the categories of gifted and talented, the following buttons are presentations about the specific categories.
Every person is different and we can't fit everyone is a box. The following throughts are generalizations in order to help understand behaviors, thinking, and potential.
When we really start looking into who the student is as a person and a learner, knowing what type of student will also help us do a better job at planning appropriately for the student. The following categories are another way to help us understand the student.: A High Achiever, A Gifted Learner, or A Creative Thinker. None of them is better than the other, no child fits completely into one category, and all of them require differentiation in the classroom; knowing what type of child we are working with will help us plan better.
As you look through the document below, the same trait is compared across the chart for each type of learner. If you look at the third item down, it describes how the student may be engaged in the regular class. The high achiever is attentive, the gifted learner is selectively mentally engaged (interest or knowledge), and the creative thinker daydreams, may seem off task but is probably posing other questions about the topic to himself.
From: Kingore, B. (2004). Understanding Our Gifted.
