Gifted Education
Dr. Joanne Jones, Executive Director Curriculum & Development
Student Advancement
(757) 283-7850
Dr. Kimberly Beckerdite, Supervisor
Gifted Services
(757) 591-4566
About Gifted Education in NNPS
Our Mission Statement
The mission of the Gifted Services program is to challenge students to reach their maximum potential using higher order thinking skills and differentiated instruction in interdisciplinary units. These units emphasize problem-solving, practical applications, and a variety of strategies to meet all students’ learning styles from kindergarten to grade 12. We strive to provide a rigorous academic environment specifically designed to meet the intellectual, creative, social, and emotional needs of gifted individuals within their unique culture to produce self-directed, life-long learners who will become productive citizens.
What is the Gifted Services Program?
The gifted program is for students who have qualified through the gifted screening and identification process by demonstrating their capacity for complex processing abilities. These students need the challenge of a curriculum with high rigor and expectations that will meet the students’ social, emotional, and academic needs. The gifted program requires students to perform to their ability, to think, to stretch, and to assume responsibility for their learning.
The Gifted Services instructional program is designed around the learning styles and cognitive characteristics of gifted children. The gifted program provides a multidisciplinary curriculum incorporating critical thinking, problem solving, reflection, student interaction, collaboration, communication, and discussion. Opportunities are provided for research, inquiry based learning, scientific analysis, project-based learning, and literary analysis. To meet the diverse needs of students identified for gifted services, teachers utilize strategies such as subject acceleration, curriculum compacting, tiered instruction which provides challenge and complexity, advanced materials as appropriate, and avenues for research/independent study related to core curriculum concepts. Among the specialized studies included in the curriculum are problem-based learning, abstract thinking, research skills, productive thinking units, and literature selections that encourage critical reading and thinking skills.