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The Department of Gifted and Talented Education identifies and provides support services for gifted students as defined by state law: **257.44 Gifted and talented children defined.**

//"Gifted and talented children"// are those identified as possessing outstanding abilities who are capable of high performance. Gifted and talented children who require appropriate instruction and educational services commensurate with their abilities and needs beyond those provided by the regular school program. Gifted and talented children include those children with demonstrated achievement or potential ability, or both, in any of the following areas or in combination: (Multiple criteria will be used, with three of the guidelines met. A single test score is not sufficient data for identification.) Central Academy, located at Central Campus, is an educational program specifically designed for highly gifted and talented students. Central Academy is in the top 1% of all Advanced Placement programs in the country. Students typically enter the Academy in 8th grade. Qualified students from every Des Moines Public middle and high school spend part of their day at the Academy. The curriculum at Central Academy is compacted and accelerated. Students begin taking the rigorous Advanced Placement courses in 10th grade. Summer school for K-9 G/T students is an opportunity for enrichment. The program is very popular and the classes fill quickly. All identified K-9 students receive a brochure at the end of March with the registration information. Accelerated summer math classes are also offered to invited fifth graders transitioning to sixth grade. These classes allow the mathematically gifted to complete one year of math during summer school. Summer also includes an Outdoor Adventure Camp for middle school students at the 4H Campground in Madrid, Iowa the third week in July. Through out the school year, programs will be offered to students, parents, and families. The Des Moines Public Schools is committed to serving all gifted and talented students. Scholarships are available for programming offered during the summer. For more information, please contact the G/T office: 1912 Grand Ave. Des Moines, Iowa 50309-3382 Phone: 515-242-7930 FAX: 242-8278 or email: debra.mishak@dmps.k12.ia.us For more information on gifted education and the needs of gifted children, please go to these websites: [|www.nagc.org] and [|www.iowatag.org]. Click here for a list of G/T Staff and Divisions
 * 1) General intellectual ability.
 * 2) Creative thinking.
 * 3) Leadership ability.
 * 4) Visual and performing arts ability.
 * 5) Specific ability aptitude.
 * Identification guidelines:**
 * Students who score in the 95th percentile on the Cognitive Abilities Test;
 * Students who perform at 90% or above on the Naglieri Nonverbal Aptitiude Test;
 * Students who perform at 90% or higher two years above grade level on reading assessments;
 * Students who perform at 90% or higher one year above grade level on math assessments;
 * Students who perform at the 95% or higher on the Torrance Test of Creativity;
 * Students who receive superior range ratings on the matrices for creativity, leadership, and visual and performing arts.
 * Teacher recommendations in the superior range of the matrices.

Wikis are an exceptionally useful tool for getting students more involved in curriculum. They’re often appealing and fun for students to use, while at the same time ideal for encouraging participation, collaboration, and interaction. Read on to see how you can put wikis to work in your classroom. Using these ideas, your students can collaboratively create classroom valuables. These projects are sure to get your students involved. Allow wikis to facilitate group work by using these ideas. Get your students to work together on these projects. Use your wiki to create spaces that are special to your class. Reach out to the community with these resources that everyone can appreciate. Here are even more fun and useful ways to improve your classroom with a wiki. 
 * [|50 Ways to Use Wikis for a More Collaborative and Interactive Classroom] **
 * Resource Creation **
 * 1) [|**Virtual field trips**]: Have your students research far away places they would like to go on a field trip, and get them to share images and information about the location.
 * 2) [|**Create presentations**]: Instead of using traditional presentation software, put presentations on a wiki.
 * 3) [|**Write a Wikibook**]: Make it a class project to collaboratively write a reference book that others can use.
 * 4) [|**Study guides**]: Ask students to create study guides for a specific part of the unit you’re studying.
 * 5) [|**Readers’ guides**]: Have your students create readers’ guides to share their favorite and most important parts of works you’ve read in class.
 * 6) [|**Solving wiki**]: Post difficult math problems, such as calculus, so that the class can collaboratively solve them.
 * 7) [|**Glossary**]: Get your class to create a glossary of terms they use and learn about in new units, adding definitions and images.
 * 8) [|**Class encyclopedia**]: Ask your class to create an "encyclopedia" on a topic, adding useful information that can be built upon through the years.
 * 9) [|**Create exploratory projects**]: If you’re teaching a new subject, ask your students to collect and share information in the wiki so that you can learn together.
 * Student Participation **
 * 1) [|**Exam review**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Encourage students to share review notes and other helpful pieces of information on your classroom’s wiki.
 * 2) [|**Peer review**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Allow students to draft their papers in a wiki, then ask other students to comment it.
 * 3) [|**Student portfolios**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Assign portfolio pages to each of your students, and allow them to display and discuss their work.
 * 4) [|**Correction competition**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: You can post a document riddled with mistakes, then have students compete to see who can fix the most errors fastest.
 * 5) [|**Peer editing**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Ask students to edit each others’ work for spelling, grammar, and facts based on a style guide or rules you’ve defined.
 * 6) [|**Vocabulary lists**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Encourage students to submit words that they had trouble with, along with a dictionary entry.
 * 7) [|**Get feedback**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Ask students to post comments on wiki pages.
 * 8) [|**Share notes**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Let your students share their collective information so that everyone gets a better understanding of the subject.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Group Projects **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
 * 1) [|**Group authoring**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: By asking groups to use central documents in a wiki, you can ensure that everyone’s documentation will be uniform.
 * 2) [|**Grandma timeline**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Have your students create a history timeline using Grandmas as units of time.
 * 3) [|**Organize ideas**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Allow group members to post their ideas in a wiki, and you’ll cut down on duplicate ideas, while at the same time allowing them to build upon the ideas.
 * 4) [|**Fan clubs**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Start fan clubs for your students’ favorite figures from history and ask them to contribute their favorite quotes, photos, and other tidbits together.
 * 5) [|**Track projects**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: With wikis, it’s easy for students to see which tasks have been completed and which ones still need to be fulfilled.
 * 6) [|**Track participation**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Assign a wiki page to a group project, and then individual pages for each student to show their participation.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Student Interaction **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
 * 1) [|**Collect data**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Use central documents to make sure that data collection is uniform and easy to manage.
 * 2) [|**Mock-debate**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Pit two class candidates against each other and perform a debate on your wiki.
 * 3) [|**Study buddy matching**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Let students match themselves up into study buddy pairs.
 * 4) **Multi-author story**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Start a creative writing unit, and get your students to write a short story together, each writing a small amount of the story.
 * 5) [|**Choose your own adventure story**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: A twist on the multi-author story could be a choose your own adventure story, where each student branches out into a different path.
 * 6) [|**Share reviews**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Post articles for different movies, books, and TV shows, encouraging students to share what they though about them.
 * 7) [|**Literature circles**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Host a book club on your wiki where students are required to read the same book, then discuss it on the wiki.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">For the Classroom **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
 * 1) [|**Classroom FAQ**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Make it a class project to create an FAQ for your classroom that will help new students and those that will come in years later.
 * 2) **Classroom scrapbook**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Share news, photos, and current achievements in your classroom on a wiki page.
 * 3) [|**Calendar**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Create a calendar on the wiki and encourage students to add their own personally important dates.
 * 4) [|**Classroom newspaper**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Create your own news outlet on a wiki.
 * 5) [|**Hall of fame**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Highlight students’ exceptional achievements on the wiki.
 * 6) [|**Classroom policies**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Encourage students to draft rules and policies for the classroom.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Community **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
 * 1) [|**School tour**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Get your class to take photos of your school and write about their favorite spots on the wiki, then share it with the rest of your school and your local community.
 * 2) [|**Recipe book**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Ask students to bring in their favorite recipes from home, then share them with parents and the rest of the community.
 * 3) [|**International sharing**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Collaborate with a class from another country and share information about your culture, or even a day in the life of a typical student.
 * 4) [|**Local history**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Document historical buildings, events, and more from our community. You can ask students to perform interviews, and encourage parents and other adults to contribute their knowledge in the wiki.
 * 5) [|**Community FAQ**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Ask students to create an FAQ for their community, then pass it on to your next group of students.
 * 6) [|**Community nature guide**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Have your students collect highlights of plants and animals in your community.
 * 7) [|**Share achievements**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Let parents log in to the wiki to see what their children have accomplished.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Other **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
 * 1) [|**Let your students leave their books at school**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: With a strong classroom wiki, you should have a wealth of information available, so much so that students can leave their books at school and access information online.
 * 2) **Use wikis as a hub**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Any time a student creates anything online, ask them to link to it or upload it to the wiki so that everyone can use it.
 * 3) [|**Make website creation easier for students**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Using a wiki platform, students don’t have to worry about web design, so they can focus on content instead.
 * 4) [|**Organization**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Save links, documents, and quotes related to units or your classroom as a whole.
 * 5) [|**Track assignments**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: If you ask students to put their research on wikis, you can check in on their progress to make sure they’re on the right path.
 * 6) [|**Teacher collaboration**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Work with other teachers to create lesson plans and track students’ success.
 * 7) [|**Create and pass a legislative bill**]<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Let students see the back and forth that exists in legislation by creating their own and attempting to pass it.

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//Joyce VanTassel-Baska, Ed.D. Center for Gifted Education The College of William and Mary//

 * 1) Gifted students are not all alike. They vary in respect to general ability, domain-specific aptitude, interests and predispositions, and motivation and personality. Thus one program or service is insufficient to respond to their diverse needs.
 * 2) Gifted students benefit from interaction with peers. Intellectual peerage contributes to important growth patterns in all subject areas (Kulik & Kulik, 1992). For example, cooperative learning, carried out in heterogeneous classroom settings, produces no growth (Rogers, 2001).
 * 3) Gifted students need various forms of acceleration throughout their school years, ranging from content acceleration to Advanced Placement or dual enrollment to mentorships (Shiever & Maker, 2003; Renzulli & Reis, 2003; Clasen & Clasen, 2003).
 * 4) Gifted students are capable of producing high level products in specific areas of learning at the level of a competent adult (NAGC, 1990). For example, fourth graders can draft a policy for pollution that would rival an adult community committee.
 * 5) Gifted students need to be challenged and stimulated by an advanced and enriched curriculum that is above their current level of functioning in each area of learning (VanTassel-Baska, 2003).
 * 6) Gifted students need to be instructed by personnel trained in the education of gifted students to ensure that they are sufficiently challenged, exposed to appropriate level work, and motivated to excel (Croft, 2003).
 * 7) Gifted students at elementary level require differentiated staffing and flexible scheduling to accommodate their needs; at secondary level, they require special classes (Feldhusen, 2003).
 * 8) Gifted students have counseling needs that require psychosocial, academic, and career preparation on an annual basis (Colangelo, 2003; Greene, 2003; Jackson & Snow, 2004; Silverman, 1993). At secondary level, assigning one counselor to the gifted may be the best staffing model to employ.
 * 9) Gifted students have affective characteristics that render them vulnerable in school settings such as perfectionism, sensitivity, and intensity (Lovecky, 1992; Robinson, 2002).
 * 10) Gifted students in general have healthy social relationships and adjust well to new situations (Robinson, 2002). Concerns for social development more than cognitive growth are rarely warranted.