The Oxford Board of Education June 10 approved the first reading for a new talented and gifted program within the district. The new program included some slight changes to the district’s talented and gifted policy.
The new ‘Highly-Abled? program is geared towards students in the elementary grades. While working to develop the plan, teachers and administrators felt that this area needed the most addressing since students in the middle school and high school levels already have opportunities to pursue their talents and interests.
‘We needed to find a way to supply a similar opportunity at the elementary level,? said Clear Lake principal Jim Schwarz to the school boards.
The program is designed to support the highly-abled child inside of their regular class by providing accommodations based upon determined program levels. This means the students will not be segmented from classmates or alienated from peers. In fact, those using similar programs have found that by including the program within the regular classroom, the general student population will often utilize the highly-abled students as a resource.
In addition, documentation of these steps will be kept and will follow the student from school to school. This will enable the student to continual move forward no matter which building they attend.
‘One of our goals was to provide a framework for documentation and programming that is consistent across the district,? explained Schwarz. ‘That way we can afford the same benefits no matter what school the student is at, and the teachers won’t be reinventing the wheel every year.?
Students will be identified on a case-by-case basis through teacher observations; parent provided information; and formal/informal assessments such as classroom tests, standardized tests, out-of-level tests, MLPP, MEAP and running records. Students can then be offered the appropriate level of services ranging from flexible grouping, literature circles and enrichment opportunities to clustering, subject area acceleration and individualized plans to accelerated promotion or skipping a grade. Each opportunity level offers multiple possibilities for each youth.
‘We don’t want students feeling unchallenged or bored,? Schwarz said to the board.
The adjusted ‘Highly-Abled? policy passed by the board describes qualifying students as those with a specific academic ability superior to that of children of the same age or grade level. The goals of the program are to identify the potentially gifted at every level and in every school; stimulate their intellectual curiosity, independence and responsibility; and help the development of originality and creativity. These guidelines shall be used in addressing all academic areas.
Since the program does not require additional curriculum or extra staffing, instituting it will be inexpensive for the district. Schwarz explained to this reporter that this district receives roughly $8,000 from the state, to be matched by the district, for such programs anyway, and this money will simply go for training during this upcoming year.
Oxford’s elementary schools will be instituting the new program gradually beginning this fall. The first step will be to begin individual teacher training and identification of students.