Gifted & Talented

At Mitchell Elementary School

Mission Statement:

Mitchell is committed to fostering a dynamic learning environment where every student’s potential is recognized and nurtured. Our GT Resource Teacher collaborates with teachers, paraprofessionals, and families to extend and enhance learning opportunities in all classrooms daily. Through personalized support, goal setting, and resource development, we strive to provide consistent, meaningful extensions that challenge and engage our students, ensuring growth both within and beyond the classroom.

To support this mission, our GT Resource Teacher:

Creates and helps monitor ALP goals
Plans and creates extensions in collaboration with classroom teachers for multiple subjects. This ensures learning is extended in all classrooms every day, not just once a week.
Provides materials and lesson plans for paraeducators who facilitate small group extensions.
May provide some small group extensions multiple times a week, providing follow up opportunities in the classroom in between lessons.

Our kids are growing, including our advanced learners! Not only have all of our students historically exceeded the state of Colorado's median academic growth percentiles in English language arts and math, but so have our advanced learners. We continue to ensure all students are making at least a year's growth in a year's time – if not more – at Mitchell.

Advanced Learning Plan

Mitchell Elementary School develops an Advanced Learning Plan (ALP) to guide programming for every identified gifted student.

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Advanced Learner Enrichment Strategies

Tiered assignments

Tiered assignments work well in skill areas where the student has not yet met the outcomes, but can do so easily, and requires additional challenge. For example, in math class the student may be performing similar operations as his peers but using more challenging numbers or completing more steps. In language arts, the student may read more challenging texts, write in a more sophisticated genre, or use more complex words in word study.

Specialized grading criteria

Some students are ready for a greater challenge even when completing similar assignments. For example, when assigning a piece of writing, a teacher may only be looking for ideas, organization and correctness from the class. A gifted student may also be assessed on voice or word choice. Likewise, the parameters of the assignment may be changed to suit the student's strengths. A science experiment may become a video or PowerPoint presentation; a social studies essay may require three sources from the class and more than five from the gifted student.

Extension activities

School-wide enrichment

Many researchers believe that what we label “gifted education” is important for all students. A school-wide enrichment plan can provide all students with exposure to new hobbies and experiences through an interest-fair format. For one day, community and staff members can offer workshops at the school for which all students sign up. Exposure to these workshops may spark an interest or reveal a talent in particular students, which may then be nurtured in the classroom or through extracurricular activities.

Enrichment clusters

If there is a small group of students in the school with similar interests and aptitudes, they may be brought together for a set period of time each week to pursue a topic of study under the guidance of a teacher or mentor. The topic may change frequently or develop into a long-term exploration, but it should be open-ended and have real-world application. Enrichment clusters may be worked into the schedule of a committed teacher as contact time.

Resources

Gifted & Talented in Jeffco

The Jeffco Public Schools Gifted and Talented (GT) Department’s vision is to Actualize Learners’ Potential for gifted and high-ability learners through a focus on access, equity, inclusion and diversity. All students deserve an education that provides meaningful growth academically, socially and emotionally.

Each year, every second grader in Jeffco takes The Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT) which measures reasoning skills with different types of verbal, quantitative and nonverbal questions. The results of this test inform teachers which students may be identified as gifted and talented.

What Is A Gifted Student?

GT students are learners between the ages of four and 21 whose abilities, talents or potential for accomplishment are so exceptional or developmentally advanced that they require special educational programming. Children under five who are gifted may also receive early childhood special educational services.

Gifted students include students from all backgrounds who have exceptional abilities or potential. Gifted students are capable of exceptional performance, production or learning behavior and have one or more of these areas of giftedness:

Areas of giftedness

Intellectual abilities
Specific academic skills
Creative or productive thinking
Leadership abilities
Visual arts, performing arts or musical abilities
Physical skills

The 2024 Fall GT Center application is now closed. Please contact your GT Resource Teacher with questions regarding GT Center.

Learn More About Gifted & Talented in Jeffco

Meet the Team