Virgen's 7th Gifted class is a cross-teamed, fast-paced class covering advanced skills across various careers as well as a focus on affective/emotional education for WMS gifted students.

Class syllabi

1st Quarter: Forensic Science

2nd Quarter: Zoology & Dissection

3rd Quarter: Makerspace Challenge

4th Quarter: Intro to Affective/Gifted Coping Skills (7th Grade Unit)

In some years, a quarter may be focused on the classroom Makerspace. "Genius Hour" is regularly integrated to allow students' personal interest.

Past units have included Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Medieval Era

What will be difficult about entering WMS gifted for some students

Good at “doing school,” most gifted learners found elementary to be a breeze, and few if any experienced true challenges. Even though the gifted mind is naturally built to embrace challenge and critical thinking, for many of them “fun” has been equated with “easy,” because the pain of struggle (and unfortunately also the pleasure of overcoming it) evaded them. Typically this will continue to evade the gifted learner for many years - for some of them, their first struggles will happen in high school or even college!

They want that “A.” They crave it. Elementary taught them that an "A" is more evidence that they are at the top of their game. Grading theory itself is tricky: in a regular classroom, completion of a low-DOK worksheet may earn a student an “A” in one class while the same subject with a different teacher may require high-DOK critical thinking to meet the same standard.

In gifted, students opt into advanced classes meant to challenge learners above a certain IQ threshold (akin to the difference in depth of learning and style of grading between an AP class vs. an entry-level class at the high school level). Gifted learners are then evaluated on a gifted spectrum, which is far more advanced in requirement and delivery. This causes many of the kids to experience their first Bs and Cs. By 8th grade, the majority of the gifted students have built better time management skills, decreased procrastination, increased hard work, and their grades show the difference. But it’s never about the grades in gifted - it’s about the growth.

Growth mindset is imperative to develop in gifted learners. Many of them struggle with equating that subjective “A” with their self-worth, and a few of them even resist being challenged at all. For those reasons, students are encouraged to submit redos based on teacher comments, to express personal needs related to deadlines, and to utilize tools for increasing time-management and risk-taking in their work.