Graduate Goals

“Gifted education services must include curricular and instructional opportunities directed to the unique needs of the gifted learner.” (Kimberly Chandler, Aiming for Excellence: Gifted Program Standards; annotations to the NAGC Pre K 12 Gifted Program Standards).

The vision of the Francis Howell School District is an environment where all students learn and a community of productive, responsible, self-sufficient citizens of a global society. The district’s vision statement defines four goals to support the development of this vision. The gifted curriculum is an extension of the Francis Howell District curriculum and is aligned with the district’s vision statement and strategic goals. The curriculum provides multi-faceted opportunities and promotes the pursuit of individual interests through in-depth and expanded forms of differentiated instruction utilizing the following goals:

Goal I: Research

The gifted learner in the Francis Howell School District will acquire the advanced knowledge and comprehension skills to gather, understand, analyze and apply in-depth information and abstract ideas with a greater degree of independence.

Rationale:

Gifted students share many characteristics that allow them to be active investigators (Clark; Pirto). They are often interested in topics that are beyond the interests or capabilities of their age peers, and their task commitment allows them to investigate a subject of interest for extended periods of time. Their high degree of curiosity makes them want to probe, ask questions, and discover reasons why. Because of their ability to synthesize disparate information, they can work on complex projects, and their insight allows them to find answers where others do not perceive questions (Moore, 2001 pg. 447).

Goal II: Communication

“To express the most difficult matters clearly and intelligently, is to strike coins out of pure gold.” Geibel

The gifted learner in the Francis Howell School District will acquire the advanced knowledge and multifaceted skills to communicate abstract ideas effectively within and beyond the classroom.

Rationale:

Talking is not only a medium for thinking but also an important means by which we learn how to think. From a Vygotskian perspective, thinking is an internal dialogue, an internalization of dialogues we’ve had with others. Our ability to think depends upon the many previous dialogues we have taken part in – we learn to think by participating in dialogue.

It is important for gifted learners to realize that the greatest ideas and solutions in the world are not worth anything unless they can be effectively communicated. The primary means of communicating those ideas is often through oral communication skills – the “ubiquitous” skills. These skills pervade every aspect of our lives. Oral communication is the primary form of communication.

Seney, Robert, “The Process Skills and the Gifted Learner”, pg. 167.

Goal III: Problem Solving

The gifted learner in the Francis Howell School District will demonstrate knowledge of multifaceted thinking (critical, creative, analytical, and organizational) in order to recognize and solve complex problems.

Rationale:

The vision of gifted education as the development of critical thinking abilities is evident as students deliberate and preserve in their problem solving, as they work to make their oral and written work more precise and accurate, as they consider others’ points of view, as they generate questions, and as they explore the alternatives and consequences of their actions. Students engage in increasingly rigorous learning activities that challenge the intellect and imagination. Such scholarly pursuits require the acquisition, comprehension and application of new knowledge and activate the need for perseverance, research, and increasingly complex forms of problem solving.

Since such processes of thinking as problem solving, strategic reasoning, and decision making are explicitly stated as the content of lessons, they become the “tasks that students are on.” The metacognitive processes engaged in while learning and applying the knowledge are discussed. Thus students’ thinking becomes more conscious, more reflective, more efficient, more flexible, and more transferable.

Collegiality is evident as students work together cooperatively with their study partners, in learning groups, and in peer problem solving. In class meetings, students are observed learning to set goals, establish plans, and set priorities. They generate, hold, and apply criteria for assessing the growth of their own thoughtful behavior. They take risks, experiment with ideas, share thinking strategies (metacognition), and venture forth with creative thoughts without fear of being judged. (Costa)

Adapted from the Phelps Center for the Gifted, Springfield Public Schools

Goal IV: Affective

“To have the intelligence of an adult and the emotions of a child… in a childish body is to encounter certain difficulties… The years between four and nine are probably the most likely to be beset with the problems.” Hollingworth ( p. 282)

The gifted learner in the Francis Howell School District will acquire the strategies and skills to understand the complexities of being gifted and make informed decisions in order to act as a sensitive, responsible member of a global society.

Rationale:

When searching for thoughts about the unique affective development of gifted children, one will find that this quest has long been an accepted part of the education of gifted children. The work of Leta Hollingworth focused on the complex ways that even young gifted children interpret their world, often finding contradictions that cause them to question why one’s actions are not always guided by one’s own beliefs, “Political correctness” matters little to children intelligent enough to see through its thin veneer of rationality. This precocious understanding of logic, however, is not always accompanied by a sophistication of emotional judgment. Often, difficulties can arise when a very intelligent child’s mind collides with the more typical aspects of his or her development.

(DeLisle, pg. 473)