• Gifted Services in the Oxford Area School District provide support and challenge to our identified gifted learners.  In order to receive Gifted Services, students must meet the criteria set by the Pennsylvania Department of Education and OASD.  Testing by a school psychologist is required to determine eligibility.  Please contact your child’s teacher, guidance counselor, or school principal to request testing.  

    Gifted students require additional rigor and challenge that go beyond the grade level curriculum.  They need enrichment and/or acceleration. Gifted learners process information differently, so we work to keep this population engaged and enthused about learning, while pushing them to persevere toward set goals.  Each gifted student has a Gifted Individualized Education Plan. Our purpose is to help gifted students develop higher level thinking skills, motivation, creative thinking, positive self-concept, leadership abilities, and the willingness to take risks.

    Gifted Support Services at the elementary level have two main components:
    1. Pull-out Enrichment
    2. Push-in/Co-teaching to support challenging activities in the regular education classroom

    Pull-out Enrichment

    Gifted students are pulled out of the regular classroom 2 hours per cycle for enrichment within the Gifted Support Classroom.  During this time, students are given the opportunity to collaborate with other gifted students in a variety of activities.

    During the beginning of  each session, students begin with "warm-up" activities.  These activities are designed to develop math, vocabulary, geography, analogy, logic and problem solving skills.

    For the remainder of class, the students engage in assignments aligned with the standards within the 4 major subject areas: language arts, math, science and social studies.  All activities fall under an over-arching concept, which research has shown is very important for gifted programming.  The over-arching themes for each grade level are:


    4th- Systems            

    5th- Structures          

    6th- Frontiers

    Finally, throughout the school year, students will complete assorted creative thinking activities, as well as lessons to address the many affective aspects of being a gifted student.

     
    Push-in/Co-teaching

    As a resource for Gifted Education, I work with classroom teachers to help facilitate differentiation and challenge.  We plan once per cycle to discuss needs and determine whether we will support the class through whole group lessons, small group instruction, modification of materials, or additional resources.