Encinitas Union School District

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Encinitas Union School District

• GATE
• Parent Informational Meeting
• 2007-08

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What We Will Review

• Who are the Gifted Students?
• Encinitas Philosophy and Approach
• The Work that has been done to date
• Encinitas Plan for Gifted Education
• Whats new in Gifted Education in EUSD
• Questions

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Characteristics

• Precocious wise beyond years in certain areas
  but immature in others
• Asynchronous Development
• Intense about issues of interest
• Sensitive
• Thrive on complexity enjoy ambiguity, question
  authority, note inconsistencies
• Multipotentiality varied interests and
  abilities making it difficult to select careers
• Perfectionistic
• Large Vocabulary (environment)

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Gifted Elementary Students

• Wide variety of interest (in depth/flitting)
• Advanced sense of humor
• Highly verbal on subjects of interest
• Learn quickly with little practice
• Resist details and long assignments
• Prefer their work instead of teacher work
• Thrive on complexity and problem-solving

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Gifted Elementary Students

• Prefer to work alone play with one or two
  friends
• Long attention span on favorite subjects
• Strong sense of justice (tattle, fair, emotional)
• Love to experiment with ideas/methods
• Creative and nonconforming

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Gifted Adolescents

• May lack needed study skills and organization
• May find little new to learn in school or be
  frustrated with the rote or mundane
• May appear to slow down in learning
• May need to deal with the realities of being
  younger than preferred peers
• Feel pressure to perform or do great things
• Girls struggle with femininity v. smart
• Desire acceptance more than smarts

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Fact v. Fiction What Do You Think?

• Gifted students will make it on their own, with
  or without differentiated instruction.
• Gifted students are at a greater risk for
  underachievement.
• Gifted students are most likely to be the
  straight A students or high achievers in the
  school.
• Gifted students typically know 35-50 of the
  curriculum before they get to class.
• The social and emotional development of the
  gifted student is at the same level as his or her
  intellectual development.
• Gifted students are a homogeneous group.

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Philosophy

• In keeping with our belief that all children
  should be challenged to meet their full
  potential, Encinitas Union School District
  commits to serving those students who have the
  potential to be gifted and talented in the full
  range of academic pursuits regardless of their
  linguistic, racial, ethnic, cultural, or
  socioeconomic subgroup.
• We recognize that gifted students possess unique
  abilities and talents as individual as each
  student. The Districts GATE services are
  designed to meet those individual needs and
  encourage intellectual, social and emotional
  development.
•  

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Philosophy (cont.)

• The Encinitas Union School District supports the
  National Association of Gifted Childrens
  definition of gifted and talented students as,
  Children and youth with outstanding talent who
  perform or show the potential for performing at
  remarkably high levels of accomplishment when
  compared with others of their age, experience, or
  environment. We believe that gifted students
  will learn best when they have well-trained
  teachers who fully understand the affective and
  academic needs of gifted students and are
  provided high quality differentiated curriculum
  which extends student learning. All students,
  regardless of their school, must be provided
  equal access to trained teachers and the
  differentiated curriculum.

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Encinitas Goal Statement

• It is the districts goal to provide equitable,
  high quality differentiated learning
  opportunities that are both rigorous and engaging
  so that our GATE identified students reach their
  full affective and academic potential. Once
  identified, we feel it is our responsibility to
  provide students with the necessary support and
  high quality differentiated learning
  opportunities, that exhibit acceleration,
  complexity, challenge, depth, and creativity,
  enabling each student to fully develop his/her
  unique individual potential.

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Differentiation Features

• Acceleration
• Complexity
• Depth
• Challenge
• Creativity

Center for Gifted Education The College of
William and Mary
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Differentiation Feature Acceleration

• Fewer tasks assigned to master standard
• Assessed earlier or prior to teaching
• Clustered by higher order thinking skills

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Differentiation Examples Acceleration

• Implement a math curriculum objective for the
  gifted by
• Multiplying by 1 digit
• Multiplying by 2 digits
• Multiplying by 3 digits
• Complete word problems using multiplication

• Implement a math curriculum objective for the
  gifted by
• Computational procedures as a tool for problem
  solving
• Using addition, subtraction, multiplication, and
  division to solve multi-step problems

Center for Gifted Education The College of
William and Mary
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Differentiation Feature Complexity

• Used multiple higher level skills
• Added more variables to study
• Required multiple resources

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Differentiation Examples Complexity

• Read Animal Farm and discuss the novels
  symbolism. Write an essay analyzing how the
  symbolism communicates central themes of the
  novel.

• Read Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies and
  compare and contrast how the novels reflect the
  concept of power. Write a persuasive essay
  arguing which of the novels communicates the
  concept more effectively and why.

Center for Gifted Education The College of
William and Mary
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Differentiation Feature Depth

• Studied a concept in multiple applications
• Conducted original research
• Developed a product

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Differentiation Example Depth

• Choose one of the following topics and prepare an
  oral presentation using at least four library
  sources
• -Shakespeares World
• -The American Dream
• -The Role of Science Fiction in Literature

• Debate one of the following resolutions.
• -Mankind is on a path toward human progress
• -Studying our past will help us cope with the
  future.
• Use multiple sources including surveys,
  interview, and library sources in your
  preparation.

Center for Gifted Education The College of
William and Mary
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Differentiation Feature Challenge

• Advanced resources employed
• Sophisticated content stimuli used
• Cross-disciplinary applications made
• Reasoning made explicit

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Differentiation Examples Challenge

• Joe invested 1,000 in stock in January. When he
  sold it in December, the price was up 12 from
  his purchase price. What was his profit on this
  stock?

• Which would you rather choose?
• a) 80 profit in year 1 and 50 loss in year 2.
• b) 5 profit in year 1 and 5 profit in year 2.
• Explain your reasoning.

Center for Gifted Education The College of
William and Mary
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Differentiation Feature Creativity

• Designed/constructed a model based on principles
  or criteria
• Provided alternatives for tasks, products, and
  assessments
• Emphasized oral and written communication to a
  real-world audience

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Differentiation Examples Creativity

• Conduct an experiment on plant growth by
  measuring weekly progress of two sets of seeds,
  one in artificial light indoors and one outside
  in shade.

• Design an experiment on one of the following
  questions and share your results in an oral and
  written presentation
• Are bees attracted to diet cola?
• Are earthworms attracted to light?
• Are boys more interested in computers than girls?
• Your own question

Center for Gifted Education The College of
William and Mary
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Accelerate Then Enrich

• Enrichment
• Moving beyond, enhancing, modifying, or adding to
  the curriculum usually at a similar level of
  complexity but more knowledge or breadth
• Extension of the regular curriculum
• Acceleration
• Reduce the known material, complete at a faster
  pace, buy time for early entrance to college or
  more advanced work or independent study/practicum
• Increase the complexity, depth, abstractness of
  learning to include that which is typically
  expected of older students

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A Nation Deceived Meta-Analytic Findings on
Acceleration

• Bright students almost always benefit from
  accelerated programs based on achievement test
  scores.
• When compared to same-age, intellectual peers,
  those students who were accelerated performed
  almost one grade level higher academically.
• When compared to older, non-accelerated students,
  the accelerated student performance was
  indistinguishable from that of bright, older
  non-accelerated students.

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How EUSD GATE Work Started

• Target established as part of our Strategic
  Planning Process
• Summer Institute at the Center for Gifted
  Education, College of William and Mary
• Differentiation Task Force - August 2006
• Session at Management Retreat with Leadership and
  Board
• Parent Information Nights at all nine schools
• Formation of GATE Instructional Improvement
  Committee (IIC)

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Work of the GATE IIC

• New Composition
• Intermediate Teacher from each school
• Primary Teacher from each school
• Parent Representatives
• Principal Representatives

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Work of the GATE IIC

• Recommendations of the Differentiation Task Force
• What can We Do Now!
• Surveyed Teachers regarding what they are
  currently using
• Developed list of appropriate resources
• Presentation of WM Pilot by Robyn Litt
• Reports back to ILC after each meeting

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Work of the GATE IIC

• Identified appropriate support materials to be
  used district-wide
• William and Mary Units
• Junior Great Books
• Everyday Math
• ALEKS and Successmaker
• Re-writing GATE Plan

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GATE Plan

• Approval by the State for 1, 2 or 3 years
• Required to receive state funding
• Last plan approved for 2 years
• Renewal was due June 15, 2007.

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GATE Plan

• 8 Sections
• Program Design
• Identification
• Curriculum and Instruction
• Social and Emotional
• Professional Development
• Parent and Community Involvement
• Program Assessment
• Budgets

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GATE Plan

• Whats new to our plan
• Program Design
• Include Primary as well as Intermediate Students
• Identification Process
• No longer using the Advancing Learner Label
• Pilot new tools, revise process to align with
  research
• New process to be phased in

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Identification

• Currently
• End of 3rd grade beginning of 4th
• Based upon STAR and RAVEN Tests
• STAR results reviewed each spring
• New Program
• Look at multiple, research-based criteria
• Content areas
• More than one assessment

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GATE Plan

• Whats new to our plan (cont.)
• Curriculum and Instruction
• Include the Features of Differentiated Curriculum
  for Gifted Learners
• Acceleration
• Specific Components across the district
• Social and Emotional
• Specific Training on needs of gifted students

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Curriculum

• Acceleration in Math
• Going to a classroom of the next grade level
• Learning advanced, accelerated math in their own
  classroom, individually, or in a small group
• Differentiation in Language Arts
• Flexible leveled groups for reading
• Jr. Great Books
• William and Mary Units

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GATE Plan

• Whats new to our plan (cont.)
• Professional Development
• Management Retreat
• Summer Institute Offerings
• GATE Certification Cohort
• Parent and Community Involvement
• Parent Representatives on GATE IIC
• Improved Communication
• Program Assessment
• Data on student progress
• Focus Groups at School Sites

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Next Steps for our District

• Professional Development
• Principals
• GATE Plan
• Observation Tools
• Identification Process
• GATE Cohort
• Curriculum Materials

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GATE Certification Cohort

• Requirements of participants
• Completed application for the GATE Certification
  Program
• Demonstrated commitment to differentiated
  instruction, acceleration, and the tenets of a
  high quality gifted program for students
• Participation in 2007 Summer Institute (College
  of William and Mary Differentiating Curriculum
  for Gifted Learners Strand -Language Arts or
  Science Section) along with 4 follow-up sessions
  TBD.
• Required participation in monthly meetings
  Training and use of videoconferencing
  technologies to expand learning beyond the
  classroom.
• District-funded participation in Annual
  California Association of Gifted (CAG) Conference
• Maintenance of a portfolio for presentation at an
  end-of-year colloquium.

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GATE Certification Cohort

• Components of Professional Development/Areas of
  Study
• Research-based instructional model in
  collaboration with the College of William and
  Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia
• Junior Great Books Inquiry Method
• Everyday Math Program Components
• Characteristics of gifted students
• Features of differentiated instruction for gifted
  students
• Identification of gifted students
• Meeting the social/emotional needs of gifted
  students
• Technology resources for gifted students
• Parent Education for parents of gifted students

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GATE Certification Cohort

• Incentives and Compensation
• All supplemental GATE materials and equipment
  supporting the program will be provided to each
  teacher accepted into the certification program.
• Remuneration in accordance with certificated
  contract for attendance to all meetings/workshops
  (outside the work day).
• Paid membership in the California Association for
  the Gifted (CAG)
• Subscription to the Gifted Education Communicator
• Beginning Fall 2008, a cluster of GATE identified
  students will be assigned to certified teachers
  classrooms.
• Several instructional and reference books

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Next Steps for our District

• Develop and implement new Identification Process
• Communication
• Web Site
• Envoy
• Parent Information Nights
• PTA/SSC
• Brochure

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This is all about change

• Change is the law of life. And those who look
  only to the past or present are certain to miss
  the future.
• ---JFK

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Questions