Gifted & Talented
Friendship • Union • Waldoboro • Warren • Washington
Embedded Files
The overall goal of our district is to create a learning environment that is responsive to the needs of all students, including those students with high ability/giftedness, enabling optimal growth of the special skills, abilities, talents, and intellectual potential in each student. Gifted children who have demonstrated potential far beyond that of their same age peers need differentiated programs and services to reach this goal. By virtue of their more advanced development and interests, they may need opportunities beyond those typically provided in the regular classroom. It is recognized that high ability children come from all cultural and socio-economic backgrounds and have diverse abilities and interests.
All levels of the program share the following overarching objectives:
Provide for cognitive development in core curriculum areas at an appropriate pace and depth
Develop self understanding that encourages and fosters independent and self directed learning
Develop intellectual and scholarly skills and attitudes
Promote critical, creative and divergent thinking skills
Foster intellectual inquiry at all levels
Develop aesthetic knowledge, skills, and appreciation.
Maine’s Definition of “Gifted and Talented” Me Statute 104:
“Gifted and talented children” are defined as those children in grades K-12 who excel, or have the potential to excel, beyond their age peers, in the regular school program. These students usually represent 5% of the total district population.
Exceptional ability, aptitude, skill, or creativity in one or more of the following categories are recognized:
1. General Intellectual Ability
2. Specific Academic Aptitude: Math, Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science
3. Visual and Performing Arts, including music, theater, visual, and writing
Policies & Procedures
Policies & Procedures
All Gifted and Talented programs that are approved by the Maine Department of Education are required to establish policies and procedures to make sure the program runs efficiently. Here are some of the resources that will help understand how RSU 40 approaches its Gifted Education program.
Services
Services
This is a brief outline of services provided by RSU 40 for the Gifted Education program.
To meet current health & safety guidelines, services for 2021/2022 may not follow this outline.
For grades K-3:
RSU 40 provides observation and consultation services to the classroom teacher to either differentiate classroom curriculum or advise acceleration of students based upon the individual need or level of achievement.
For grades 4-6:
Services consist of consultation, small group instruction within classrooms, weekly small group pull-out classes based on individual assessment results and classroom performance and individualized digital instruction.
The teacher also provides GT curriculum as a push-in to help the regular classroom teacher provide consistent higher level learning opportunities on an everyday basis. Students can work on thinking skills through collaborative grouping opportunities in the classroom. GT teachers help students establish learning goals through self-assessment. These goals are used to develop a personal learning plan. Students will determine how those goals will be met and will articulate how those goals are connected to personal learning.
For grades 7- 8:
Based on assessments and classroom performance, services include consultation, individualized programming, and opportunities for acceleration in high school standards. Project Based Learning and independent study are offered as alternative methods of learning, along with pull out classes for advanced math and ELA content.
For grades 9-12
Services included Honors, Dual Enrollment and AP courses along with AP4All, Virtual High School, Aspirations, independent study and acceleration opportunities. The GT teacher acts as an advocate and advisor, helping each GT student develop a plan that seeks to maximize the student’s potential in specific areas of interest. Math Team, Debate Club and robotics are offered as extracurriculars at the high school.
Please note that the program may look different due to Covid 19 health restrictions.
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