Programs and Models at the Secondary Level

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Programs and Models at the Secondary Level

• Dr(s) Jennifer Scrivner and Georgann Toop

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Middle School Years

• Conflicting educational goals, values and
  philosophies of specialist in gifted education
  and middle school specialist.
• Cooperative Learning proponents have complicated
  the issues within the middle school movement

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Lets look at the research

• Rosselli (1990) analyzed tenets of the MS
  movement.she concluded that a number of tenets
  in the movement can be used as guides to sound
  practice with the gifted. (8 of 37 are
  commensurate with Gifted Ed)
• Nongraded approach, encouragement of creativity,
  specific opportunities for gifted exploratory
  study differentiation emphasis in problem
  solving progression according to student ability

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Gallagher, Coleman, and Nelson (1995)

• Surveyed 317 middle schools on views concerning
  cooperative learning and gifted education. They
  found considerable disagreement among advocates
  and strong indications of little collaboration
  between groups. The major areas of disagreement
  were ability grouping and labeling children as
  gifted. The teacher in this study expressed
  particular concern with the lack of challenge
  with cooperative learning and the use of gifted
  students as jr teachers and the lack of
  opportunity for students to work with advanced
  content.

5
Tomlinson (1995)

• Intensive, qualitative study of one middle school
  program. She found that many teachers simply did
  not know how to differentiate the curriculum and
  instruction to meet the needs of talented youth
  not did they know how to challenge them at a
  level commensurate with their potential.
  Management of DI was a particular challenge for
  teachers who were used to suing a common lesson
  plan and text for all students, regardless of
  student diversity. The need to intensive staff
  development for MS teachers was indicated in the
  study.

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Coleman (1995)

• NMSA and NAGC meet to delineate a shared
  philosophy
• Allow each student to work at his/her own pace
  and level of learning
• Use team teaching and planning
• Use exploratory curriculum in class
• Develop interdisciplinary curricula
• Emphasize thinking skills and decision making in
  the curriculum
• Develop teams or families within large MS
• Have teacher become more facilitators of learning
  than disseminators of knowledge
• Extend learning beyond the textbook

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High School Programs

• All models call for
• Accelerated learning experiences
• Special advanced classes
• Early admission classes
• Extracurricular activities related to student
  interest
• Extended learning opportunities in academic,
  artistic and athletic domains

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High School Program Options

• Counseling services for career
• Advanced Placement classes (9-12) for top 10 of
  students
• Honors Classes
• English
• Social Studies
• Biology

• Seminars
• Foreign Language
• International Baccalaureate
• Dual enrollment
• Acceleration
• Begin algebra at gr 7
• Enroll in english/social studies early