Gifted & Talented

The goals of the William and Mary Language Arts units are to develop students' skills in literary analysis and interpretation, persuasive writing, linguistic competency, and oral communication, as well as to strengthen students' reasoning skills and understanding of the concept of change. The units engage students in exploring carefully selected, challenging works of literature from various times, cultures, and genres, and they encourage students to reflect on their readings through writing and discussion. The units also provide numerous opportunities for students to explore interdisciplinary connections to the language arts and to conduct research around issues relevant to their own lives. A guide to using the curriculum is also available. 

Jacob's Ladder targets reading comprehension skills in high ability learners. In the form of three skill ladders connected to individual readings in poetry, myths/fables, and nonfiction, students move from lower order, concrete thinking skills to higher order, critical thinking skills. For example, Ladder A moves students from Sequencing to Cause and Effect to Consequences and Implications. 

• Reveal the age of the English language with its Roman beginnings
• Teach students the most prevalent Latin stems, providing an intellectual key for young students to understand that big words aren't necessarily hard
• Discard the specious confines of teaching age-graded vocabulary, on the observation that even little children can give the species names of dinosaurs - a clear proof that they can learn and understand bigger words than they are usually asked to learn
• Aim to sow the seeds of intellectuality by introducing students to the drama and romance of ancient Rome, to the names of its thinkers, and to some of the fascinating facts of its history
• Show the Latin-English-Spanish connection, indicating clearly how the two great languages of the United States are members of the same family
• Develop a sense of anticipation about reading classic literature in the future. In all three volumes, the authors have chosen examples of the use of words and their stems in the best sentences they could find--even if a sentence was from books more likely read in high school rather than in elementary school. Included are children's authors such as Sir Walter Scott, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Kenneth Grahame, and Robert Louis Stevenson, but also the Brontes, Jane Austen, Defoe, Milton, Morrison and Shelley. 

This is a vocabulary-building curriculum that is complex, demanding, erudite and witty. It provides internalized, maximum, meaningful, impact at the time students take SSAT's and SATs. It is a program that heavily uses etymology, not memorization. Words are presented as a system of thinking, a way of building, analyzing, spelling, pronouncing, using and choosing words. The beauty of this approach is that students will know far more than the list of words encountered in this course, the tens of thousands of words which are not listed, but which are expressions of the system.

A rigorous and complete mathematics curriculum at the elementary school level with a strong emphasis in conceptual geometry and mathematical foundations, beginning at the kindergarten level and progressing through the end of pre-algebra. Topics: simple arithmetic, fractions, decimals, sets, measurement, graphs, functions, geometry and pre-algebra. 

Colorado Association for the Gifted & Talented

Colorado Department of Education

National Association for Gifted Children

The Association for the Gifted

Renzulli Learning

National Library of Virtual Manipulatives

Scholastic