Union School District, Foundation for Excellence

GATE

GATE Event: 3rd Grade GATE Field Trip

                     Oster Elementary School

                     May 21, 2010  9:00 - 11:00 am

                     FLYER

                     4th & 5th Grade GATE Family Night

                     San Jose Tech Museum

                     June 3, 2010  4:30 - 6:30 pm

                     FLYER

                                                    

 

Camp Invention - Flyer - Registration

Oster Elementary School

June 21 - 25, 2010

9:00am to 3:00pm

Student Packet from GATE meeting 1-28-10
 

The Union School District’s Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program is designed to meet the daily academic needs of eligible students in grades 3 through 8. Developing critical thinking and problem-solving skills represent essential components of the GATE program and help students to become independent, life-long learners.

All classroom instruction begins with the California State standards for grade-level core curriculum and is differentiated based on the students’ needs and abilities. In this way, the students are challenged on the same standard by using materials and tasks at varied levels of difficulty.
Students in the Union School District are encouraged to take on leadership roles in their classrooms. They contribute to problem solving, participate in discussions, and challenge themselves beyond what is required. Opportunities such as student government, theatre arts, music and after school enrichment also provide a wealth of opportunities for both gifted identified and others to be challenged and engaged beyond the core curriculum.

Union’s GATE program also includes project based learning at each of the district’s schools. Materials, training and resources are provided at the district level through a variety of research based curriculum that includes Odyssey of the Mind, Lawrence Hall of Science and GEMS Units and Interactive simulations. The GATE parent Advisory committee along with teachers and administrators from each school work to continually modify and improve the quality of offerings for Union’s Gifted and Talented identified students.

Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) aims to provide gifted and talented students with educational opportunities that match their abilities.

Program Model
In elementary and middle school, the program model for GATE is differentiation within the mainstream classroom. Teachers enrich and extend the core curriculum for gifted students, giving them the opportunity to understand the curriculum in greater depth and complexity.


Identifying Gifted and Talented Students
Multi-measures are used to identify students as gifted and talented–teacher judgment, information from parents, standardized test results, a non-reading test of cognitive processing skills (the Naglieri Non-verbal Abilities Test), identification of behaviors associated with giftedness and multiple intelligences. Differentiated curricular opportunities are available to all students who benefit from additional challenges as well as to students who are formally identified (formal identification begins in 3rd grade).

GATE Resources for Parents and Students
A list of resources for gifted children used by Union parents and teachers includ

Organizations:

California Association for the Gifted
http://www.cagifted.org

National Association for Gifted
http://www.nagc.org

Lyceum
www.lyceum-online.com

National Association of Child Advocates
http://www.childadvocacy.org

National Foundation for Gifted and Talented (NRC/GT)
http://www.nfgcc.org

Resources:

Summer & Beyond - GATE Websites (pdf)

Information from Melody Lowman Gate presenter on 1-26-09

Key Developmental Differences of Gifted (pdf)

Ten Things Gifted Kids Would like Their Parents to Know (pdf)

Rersources for Parents and Teachers (pdf)

Gifted Education Research, Resource and Information Centre (GERRIC)
http://gerric.arts.unsw.edu.au/lnks.html

College Board
http://www.collegeboard.org/index.html

Educational Testing Service
http://www.ets.org/

Teacher Resources:
National Excellence Report (U.S. Government, 1993)
http://www.ed.gov/about/pubs/

GATE Plan

If you would like to know more about our GATE program, you can download the USD GATE Plan. (pdf)