The Zachary Community School District offers a Gifted Program for students who are identified as academically gifted. This program provides a challenging and rigorous curriculum to engage, motivate, and inspire students to become lifelong scholars. It includes acceleration, compacting and enrichment while incorporating technology and the arts through all subject areas. Students are given opportunities to extend their classroom learning by visiting museums, science research centers, and historical sites, as well as interviewing and interacting with content experts who visit the classrooms. Students are active participants in the learning process as they construct meaning through hands-on and rich educational experiences. The goal of this program is to inspire, challenge and motivate students to become critical, creative thinkers and independent, lifelong learners.
Screening for the Gifted and Talented Program
While the parents or the regular education teacher may ask for an evaluation for students suspected of meeting the definition of gifted and/or talented, the local education agency determines the screening procedures before administrating the psychological and /or achievement test required by state mandate.
Gifted and Talented Definition
The gifted program provides screening, identification, and programs for exceptional children who demonstrate abilities that give evidence of high performance in academic and intellectual aptitude.
The talent program seeks to screen, identify, and provide services for children who possess unique talent in the visual or performing arts.
Rights of exceptional children
Exceptional children, ages 3-21 including gifted and talented children, are protected under the guidelines for special education services. The gifted and/or talented child has a right to free appropriate public education, an individualized education plan (IEP), a reevaluation, as well as due process procedures if these guarantees are not met.
Screening for the Gifted and Talented
While the parents or the regular education teacher may ask for an evaluation for students suspected of meeting the definition or gifted or talented, the local education agency determines the screening procedures before administrating the psychological and /or achievement tests required by law.
Service Delivery Models
The continuum for gifted and talented students include the regular classroom with supplemental aids and services, a resource center or class, a self-contained class, and preschool services. At the IEP meeting, the school system’s representative and the parent determines what program bests meet the needs of the child as indicated by the evaluation report.
Curriculum for the Gifted and Talented
The gifted and talented program seeks to meet the needs of the child who is identified as gifted and/or talented. State regulations mandate services to the identified gifted/talented child that will provide challenging curriculum unique to his/her abilities. The gifted and talented curriculum emphasizes enrichment, acceleration, higher level thinking skills, multi-disciplinary content, abstract thinking skills, and a higher degree of complexity than regular classroom curriculum.
Resources
Louisiana’s Rights of Gifted/Talented Children in Public Schools
Is My Child Gifted?
About the Gifted Program
Gifted Children’s Bill Of Rights
The National Association for Gifted Children
Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted
Contact
Aeneid Mason,
Director of Student Support Services