Teaching

N.J. District To Try Tiered Interventions for Gifted Students

By Christina A. Samuels — August 20, 2010 1 min read
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The term “response to intervention” doesn’t show up in this article about a new gifted and talented program set to launch in some elementary schools in the Garden State, but that clearly seems to be what’s happening:

The [Gifted and Talented Enrichment Services] program works on a new approach to teaching being introduced into the elementary schools. Students of varying abilities will be engaged via lessons while in the same classroom using their creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, and logical reasoning skills. It is expected that students will display a willingness and ability to plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning experiences. Students will be exposed to an array of academic, social, cultural and technological topics as they intermingle during these enrichment activities... Those who excel in a certain area will work together on enrichment activities. Students who get into a higher bracket of the program, offered for the fourth and fifth grades, would take part in a program that runs once-a-week with other similar students in a separate class setting.

I’m really intrigued to see how tiered interventions can be used for a variety of purposes, including for gifted education. Though the goal of RTI for remedial purposes is to move students back into the general education population, for gifted education I can imagine the goal being to push students as far as they can go UP the tiers, instead of down.

My blog colleague, Tamara Fisher at Unwrapping the Gifted, has written some great posts about RTI and its possible utility with gifted students. You can check them out here and here.

A version of this news article first appeared in the On Special Education blog.