Advanced Academics

While gifted children share with all children the same basic need for love and acceptance, they also have a powerful need for a differentiated curriculum. Gifted students have abilities that allow them to move at a faster pace and to retain knowledge in greater depth when compared with other students. Gifted students also have the ability to make insightful connections between pieces of information and events.

Because of their unique abilities, gifted students require access to a challenging curriculum as well as learning opportunities and interactions with their intellectual peers. They need to be exposed to varied subjects, to share and discuss their ideas verbally, and to explore their own interests. Mesquite ISD offers special programming for gifted students in order to meet their need for a differentiated curriculum.

Gifted students are identified through a four-step process:

1. Referral
2. Screening
3. Identification
4. Placement

The final selection for placement is made by a committee of at least three local district educators who have received training in the identification and assessment of gifted students.

Screening involves the analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data. Achievement tests; educational abilities tests; student performance as recorded with grades, portfolios, and interviews; teacher/parent checklists; and district testing are considered during the screening process.

Parents: to initiate a new student referral for the Mesquite ISD GT Program, click here.

 

Evaluation of the Mesquite Gifted Program is based on student growth as determined by testing (standardized and criterion referenced) and/or evaluation of student products. Input from students, teachers, administration, and parents is gained through conferences and evaluation rating instruments.

The curriculum for the academically gifted focuses on research/study skills, along with critical thinking and creative/productive thinking, while enhancing student leadership skills through group dynamics.

Research/Study

The student will:

• Select and define a topic and/or research question
• Identify an audience
• Gather and organize information
• Present a creative, original product.

Critical Thinking

The student will analyze, question, infer, reason, and evaluate.

Creative/Productive Thinking

The student will exhibit fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration, complexity, curiosity, imagination, and risk taking.

Group Dynamics

The student will:

• Participate in cooperative group problem-solving
• Participate in collaborative group presentations
• Experience various roles in group activities
• Model trustworthiness and acceptance of others.

Program Goals

Students will:

• Apply their general intellectual abilities through performance of complex mental tasks

• Further develop their creative/productive thinking abilities through the generation of original products reflecting the use of higher level thought processes

• Further develop their specific subject matter aptitudes through the utilization of advanced content and processes to produce original complex products

• Seek original solutions to self-selected problems reflecting use of higher level thought processes

• Become self-directed learners

• Become more aware of and cope more successfully with their giftedness in relation to themselves and others.