Wissahickon Middle School is committed to the development and refinement of gifted programs, which are differentiated, challenging, and individualized in order to enhance each student's potential for excellence. Students that are gifted have special needs that arise from their unique learning styles, individual intellectual strengths, and capabilities. The gifted program at WMS embraces the uniqueness of these students and allows them to be challenged. Our program seeks to ignite, encourage, and maintain the curiosity and passion for learning students that are gifted possess by exploring subjects and issues that are pertinent and enriching to them. Recognizing the importance of technology, programs strive to include a technological component in all units of study.

The rationale for adjusting the gifted program considers the following:

 Curriculum and instruction for gifted learners must be flexible enough to address the broad array of needs represented in that population. There can be no “standard” curriculum that will develop the possibilities in the very non-standard population of learners. While there are principles that guide effective curriculum and instruction for all learners, and principles that guide effective curriculum and instruction for learners whose giftedness is evident, there is no single curricular or instructional approach that will be adequate for all high potential learners. Any model of curriculum development that seeks to serve the broad population in which high potential learners exist will have to promote flexibility to match curriculum to learner.

--Tomlinson, C., Kaplan, S., Renzulli, J.S., Purcell, J., Leppien, J., & Burns, D. (2002) The Parallel Curriculum. CA:  Corwin Press.

 As of the 2003-2004 school year, the gifted program will consist of three components: 

1.                Push-in

a.      This will be the priority for 2002-2003 and the future. Our goal is to have more time in the classroom where the gifted support teacher will work with the classroom teacher to team-teach and provide differentiated instruction for students. Most, if not all, of our gifted students are in heterogeneous classrooms, in following with middle school philosophy. The goal will be to introduce the concept of Parallel Curriculum, which is designed to develop high potential and challenge high-ability learners. Parallel Curriculum will be introduced first in the Language Arts/English block for the 2002-2003 school year.  The model for Parallel Curriculum “proposes the possibility of developing appropriately challenging curriculum using one, two, three, or four “parallel” ways of thinking about course content " (Tomlinson, et. al., The Parallel Curriculum, 2002, p. 17), including core curriculum, curriculum of connections, curriculum of practice, and curriculum of identity. 

2.                Gifted Seminar

a.     This will replace the standard pullout program. Students will elect to take a gifted seminar based on their individual needs and talents. Students will be given the option of choosing between several different seminars or Unified Arts classes, based on marking periods. Some of the gifted seminars are given during specific marking periods to compliment curriculum introduced in the regular classroom.

b.     Gifted seminars would be held during the same time that Unified Arts are in session (7th period).

c.      All gifted seminars will include the principals of Parallel Curriculum, with heavy emphasis on Curriculum of Connection and Curriculum of Practice.

3.                Consultant

a.     The gifted support teacher serves as a consultant to the classroom teacher. Classroom teachers will be able to consult with the gifted support teacher when looking for ways to differentiate lessons and to provide additional classroom support. The gifted support teacher will stay current on best practices in gifted education by attending workshops and seminars and share this information with 7^th grade teams.  Team time is built into the gifted support teacher’s schedule to facilitate this process.