Gifted and Talented Support/Identification

Garfield Re-2 will be accepting referrals for Gifted and Talented assessment on through December 10, 2009.. We will referr students in January 2010.

What is Gifted and Talented? Gifted children mean those persons between the ages of five and twenty-one whose abilities, talents and potential for accomplishment are so outstanding that they require special provisions to meet their educational needs. Gifted students are capable of high performance in any or a combination of these areas:

• General intellectual ability (IQ)
• Specific academic aptitude (any subject area of advanced knowledge)
  

• Creative, productive thinking (thinking way outside the box)
• Leadership and human relations skills (Martin Luther King Jr.)
• Visual and performing arts (early mastery of music, expression of human experience)
• Psychomotor ability (exceptional athleticism; Tiger Woods)

**To aid parents and teachers in understanding gifted traits, we ask that you look at the CDE website:www.cde.state.co.us/gt/index.htm for our Colorado State Department of Education's Twelve Traits of Giftedness: A Non-Biased Profile.

Only a small percentage, 3-5% of a school's population, are truly gifted. A typical school of 300 children will have 9-15 students with these exceptional needs. Giftedness manifests in different ways depending on one's ethnicity, environment (rural vs. urban community), one's learning styles, learning challenges, learning opportunities, social-emotional well being, and a host of other factors. There is a wealth of information on various GT descriptors, and no two children necessarily look the same. There are many students who are bright or high achieving and are not necessarily "gifted". Below is one of many descriptors used throughout many districts that helps teachers and parents to discern between bright and gifted students:

For more information contact:
Darlane Evans, Elementary
Kathy Goodman, Secondary
Gifted and Talented Coordinators
Highland Elementary School
970-665-6791