Gifted Education

SEARCH

Seeking Educational Alternatives to Reach and Challenge Higher-Level thinking skills.

The Loudoun County SEARCH program, offered to all K-3 grade students, focuses on thinking skills and is designed to foster a classroom environment that encourages students to develop an excitement for learning and discovery. SEARCH teachers work within the classroom to stimulate curiosity, practice problem solving strategies, incorporate cooperative learning activities, provide opportunities for students to use higher level thinking skills, and to identify students with exceptional ability.

Search teachers provide model lessons in thinking skills to students in grades K-3*. Classroom teachers work with the SEARCH teacher to screen students for gifted services. The bi-weekly SEARCH lessons are designed to foster an environment that encourages students to think, take intellectual risks, and develop an excitement for learning and discovery across a variety of thinking skills.

The Search curriculum is problem-solving based and founded upon gifted education research. The curriculum spirals developmentally through five components: perceiving, reasoning, connecting, creating, and evaluating. Each grade level learns about each component at increasingly more complex and abstract levels.

Thinking Keys:

Perceiving is understanding and learning with one’s senses. Concrete spatial and visual activities are provided and students are encouraged to look at objects in many different ways. Pattern recognition and prediction skills develop and are used along with reasoning skills.

Reasoning is using information to find answers that can be proven, are logical, and make sense. Reasoning activities begin at the simple level of recognizing, labeling, classifying, and comparing attributes of concrete objects. As students mature, reasoning activities become more abstract as students use analysis and logic to solve problems.

Connecting means linking information and ideas to see how they fit together. At the basic level, students identify and extend patterns using concrete objects. More abstract problem solving involves interpreting and extending numeric patterns, determining relationships between concepts, and making generalizations. Students make connections between cause and effect.

Creating is putting ideas, information, or objects together in a new or different way. Students learn to be flexible and fluent in their thinking with familiar objects as well as unusual and/or real life problems. Original ideas are elaborated with humor and/or beauty to provide clarity and completeness. Student products may be visual, verbal, spatial, or kinesthetic.

Evaluating is using information to make a decision. Students begin evaluating by determining what the facts are and what considerations are important in making a decision. Students learn to develop criteria and rank solutions or choices according to the criteria when making decisions.

FUSION

The School-Based, Collaborative Gifted Program, now known as FUSION, is a new model for delivering gifted services for 4th and 5th grade identified gifted learners. It was established to provide gifted services for students at their home schools. A gifted resource teacher collaborates with classroom teachers to challenge gifted learners in their regular classrooms by enriching and extending the general curriculum and by integrating curricula developed for gifted learners (e.g., William & Mary Literature Units, Jacob's Ladder, and Mentoring Mathematical Minds). In addition, gifted learners meet during the week with other gifted learners to collaborate on a variety of challenging, interdisciplinary projects. The yearly themes alternate between Leadership and Innovation.

DCI

The LCPS Gifted Education Department has added a new level of gifted services for 4th and 5th grade students. It is called Differentiated Classroom Instruction or DCI. Students who demonstrated exceptional performance in one domain, language arts or mathematics, during the gifted evaluation process were found in need of DCI in their area of strength. Some students may have been identified for DCI mathematics and DCI language arts.

The gifted resource teacher will meet with DCI students on a weekly basis to provide extension or enrichment options to differentiate instruction for them in their area of strength. These activities are designed to provide additional opportunities for rigor and deeper learning in language arts and/or mathematics.

EDGE

EDGE (Empowering Diversity in Gifted Education) is a talent development program designed to provide additional academic rigor and challenge for scholars who exhibit high academic skills and who are from groups historically underrepresented in gifted programs and other advanced academic opportunities. The program provides additional academic challenges for students designed to develop students' individual potential. Classroom teachers and gifted resource teachers work together to nurture academic potential in young learners and prepare them for more challenging and rigorous academic pathways.