The New Hampshire Gifted and Talented Curriculum Frameworks Addendum
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Curriculum Frameworks
Rationale
Introduction to this Addendum
This Addendum is designed as a companion guide to the New Hampshire K-12 Curriculum Frameworks (i.e., Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies) which was published in 1995. In accordance with the 1993 state legislation, Revised Statutes Annotated (RSA) 193-C that established the New Hampshire Educational Improvement and Assessment Program (NHEIAP), the purpose of the K -12 Curriculum Frameworks is to serve: (a) as the basis for developing statewide K- 12 Curriculum assessment instruments to be administered annually at the end-of-grades three, six, and ten, and (b) as a guide for making local decisions about curriculum development and delivery (Please note that Social Studies and Mathematics assessments begin at the end of grade six). With these purposes in mind, this Addendum is intended to help school districts address the needs of gifted and talented students across the curriculum and throughout the grades (K-12).
Gifted and Talented Addendum Rationale
This Addendum provides information on assessment, instructional strategies, support services, and other professional education resources for teachers and their staffs who are involved in educating students, in grades K-12, who have demonstrated: (1) proficiency or higher with the state standards (NHEIAP), (2) potential for higher level understanding and performance within and across curriculums, and (3) a desire to excel in, and exceed, grade level expectations.
Accommodations can vary significantly among students. For an individual student these may include support to achieve grade level expectations in one discipline, while receiving material and instruction in another discipline that exceeds grade level content. This addendum assists teachers in understanding the special needs of gifted students and offers practical, school-wide strategies that are effective with these learners.
The New Hampshire Curriculum Frameworks (material a student should know and be able to do at grades three, six, and ten) can guide a teacher in discovering both exceptional ability and a student’s unique interest. Through The New Hampshire Education Improvement and Assessment Program extraordinary ability in a student may be discovered, necessitating further evaluation. Educators will find within this document a variety of other assessment tools and strategies to identify the gifted learner.
Teachers whose students have demonstrated high levels of proficiency need specific strategies in order to meet educational needs. This addendum will assist educators in that endeavor.
Definition
“Gifted Education in New Hampshire is viewed as a commitment to create, support, and sustain many services through which educators seek, bring out, and nurture gifted behaviors -the strengths, talents, sustained interests, and best potentials of our students. The goals and purposes of gifted education should therefore be considered more broadly (and we believe, more powerfully) than merely to select and label a single, fixed group of students to be assigned to a single, fixed program.”
Gifted Education . . . does not merely imply “having a gifted program in your school, district, or SAU, as much as it should address the dynamic and on-going process of challenging all students to become aware of their best potentials, and to fulfill those potentials as fully as possible through the opportunities and services offered throughout the school program.”
Dr. Ellen Winner, head of the graduate psychology department at Boston College, wrote Gifted Children: Myths and Realities in 1996. In this book she states that gifted people “demonstrate three atypical characteristics:
* Precocity - Performing well above age level expectations in some area
* Rage to Master - Having a passion to do or to know in some specific area
* Marching to a Different Drummer - looking at their area of interest in a unique or unusual way.”
In 1972, then United States Secretary of Education S. P. Marland, Jr. presented a report to congress on the gifted and talented. Recognized as a landmark document of research, the Marland Report is widely accepted and currently used as reference regarding this population. In his report he stated:
“Gifted and talented children are those identified by professionally qualified persons who, by virtue of outstanding abilities, are capable of high performance. These are children who require differentiated educational programs and services beyond those normally provided by the regular school program in order to realize their contribution to self and society.
Children capable of high performance include those with demonstrated achievement and/or potential in any of the following areas:
* 1. General intellectual ability
* 2. Specific academic aptitude
* 3. Creative or productive thinking
* 4. Leadership ability
* 5. Visual and performing arts
* 6. Psychomotor ability.”
In 1988 Congress further changed the official definition of the gifted and talented to state:
“The term ‘gifted and talented students’ means children and youth who give evidence of high performance capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, or leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields, and who require services or activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop such capabilities.” (P.L. 100-297, Sec. 41003, Definitions)
Regardless of the definition used, students with exceptionalities exist, and once recognized, their needs must be addressed.
