• To become divergent creative thinkers who recognize problems and solve them.

• To construct personal meaning and understanding of others and of the world around them. 

• To develop the capacity for self assessment (ownership of one's learning).

• Fostering

• Understandings

• Sparking

• Innovation

• Originating

• New Ideas

The School-Based, Collaborative Gifted Program, now known as FUSION, is a new model for delivering gifted services for 4th and 5th grade 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 School-Based, Collaborative Gifted Program will be implemented at LCPS elementary schools during the 2022-2023 school year.

"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 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."

**DCI students at Potowmack will meet with the gifted resource teacher, Mrs. Faulk, once a week for extension or enrichment activities. 

Seeking Educational Alternatives to Reach and Challenge Higher-Level Thinking Skill

SEARCH is an enrichment program provided by Loudoun County Public schools for all children in grades K through 3. The SEARCH teacher visits every primary classroom once or twice each month and presents a 30-minute lesson (KG) or 45-minute lesson (Grades 1-3) that focuses on higher level thinking skills.

The SEARCH curriculum is problem-solving based and 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.

• 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 decisions. Students learn to develop criteria and rank solutions or choices according to the criteria when making decisions.

EDGE Empowering Diversity in Gifted Education

The EDGE program is designed to nurture and challenge students with gifted potential from historically underrepresented populations. The program provides additional academic challenges for students designed to develop students' individual potential. Grade-level teachers and gifted resource teachers work together to find and nurture gifted potential in young learners and prepare them for more challenging and rigorous academic pathways.

Goals:

• To develop high-level reasoning skills in students by providing additional academic challenges.

• To provide students with opportunities to enhance behaviors associated with high achievement such as developing independence and demonstrating respect for one's self and others.