Elementary GT Program
Elementary Gifted & Talented Services and Programming
At the elementary level, Gifted & Talented services are designed to support students' academic growth, intellectual curiosity, and social-emotional development through a combination of programming, advocacy, and instructional support.
Services may include:
- Advanced Learning Plans (ALPs)
- Cluster grouping
- Ability grouping in language arts and mathematics across grade levels
- Appropriate placement advocacy
- Acceleration options
- Differentiation in all subject areas
- Enrichment opportunities
- Family communication and events
Weekly Pull Out Programming Overview (Grades 1–5)
Our Gifted & Talented Enrichment program helps students grow as thinkers, problem solvers, creators, and collaborators.
In grades 1–4, students participate in both social-emotional learning experiences and academic enrichment units designed to develop advanced thinking skills. In 5th grade, students transition to a choice-based club model that allows them to pursue areas of interest in greater depth.
Across all grade levels, students are encouraged to:
- Think creatively, recognize patterns and systems, and use evidence to explain their ideas.
- Take intellectual risks and learn from challenges.
- Communicate their thinking clearly using reasons and evidence.
- Work both independently and collaboratively.
- Reflect on their thinking and revise ideas based on feedback.
The enrichment curriculum is designed as a low-floor, high-ceiling experience, allowing all identified students to access meaningful entry points while providing opportunities for increasing complexity, depth, and challenge. Students regularly practice identifying problems, generating ideas, explaining their reasoning, evaluating solutions, and refining their thinking over time.
Skills and expectations build progressively across grade levels so that students develop increasing independence, sophistication of thought, and confidence as learners.
1st Grade: Discovering Yourself as a Thinker
Students explore their strengths, interests, and thinking habits while developing creativity and problem-solving skills through book studies, creative thinking challenges, logic puzzles, and mathematical games.
2nd Grade: Doing Your Best Work
Students learn perseverance, flexible thinking, and how to improve their ideas through math problem solving, a study of heroes and changemakers, sail car engineering challenges, and detective investigations.
3rd Grade: Taking Risks and Growing Through Challenges
Students develop strategies for managing perfectionism and embracing challenge while solving mysteries, investigating math problems, exploring force and motion, and designing plant and pollinator adaptations.
4th Grade: Teamwork and Collaboration
Students strengthen collaboration and leadership skills through survival scenarios, engineering design challenges, renewable energy investigations, windmill design projects, and advanced mathematical problem solving.
5th Grade: Choice, Strengths, and Specialization
Students identify their strengths and interests by selecting a year-long enrichment club in mathematics, mystery analysis, debate, strategy game design, or leadership podcasting, allowing them to explore an area of passion in greater depth.
Complete the Elementary ALPS Family Partnership Form. (This google form should be completed only by Gifted and Talented identified students in grades K-5. If you cannot complete this form, please email Michelle Eckstein, michelle.eckstein@bvsd.org.)