Perry County District 32 celebrated Gifted Education Awareness Week Feb. 9-13 with several special classroom activities and a proclamation from the Mayor to spread awareness about the importance of gifted education.
The Missouri’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) designated the second week of February as Gifted Education Awareness week starting last year after students from District 32 reached out to advocate for this special week.
Perryville Mayor Larry Riney joined gifted students from Perry County Middle School on Tuesday, Feb. 10, to sign a proclamation officially recognizing Gifted Education Awareness Week.
District 32’s gifted classrooms also completed several advocacy projects to help spread awareness of gifted education within their buildings and the greater District 32 community.
“One of the skills we teach in gifted education is communicating effectively. Every year we focus on some type of advocacy project that teaches students the skills of how to advocate,” said District 32 Gifted Specialist Phoebe Pohlman. “This week serves as a way for students and teachers of giftedness to advocate for the needs of gifted students and raise awareness about why gifted education is important.”
Some of this year’s advocacy projects included:
2nd graders from the Perryville Primary Center traced lifesize outlines of each other in a pose they chose to represent their giftedness. Each student filled in their outlines with drawings to highlight giftedness and the posters were hung in their school buildings for display.
Gifted students from Perryville Elementary spent the week answering questions from teachers and students about giftedness during the daily morning broadcast. They also created personalized video content to share with PES teachers.
Gifted students from Perry County Middle School designed flyers and 3D printed keychains highlighting gifted education to give to their teachers.
District 32 Gifted Education Overview
District 32 offers gifted programming for students in grades 2-12 who need a challenge beyond their grade level classroom curriculum. Gifted instruction focuses on growing thinking skills to supplement their regular classwork.
Gifted education is focused on six skill areas:
Complex reasoning
Creative thinking
Affective processing
Communicating effectively
Executive functioning
Global Mindedness
Students are referred for gifted learning by parents or teachers and given an achievement-based content test. Students who score a certain level on the content testing are then given an IQ test to determine whether they qualify for gifted instruction.
2nd through 5th grade gifted students receive gifted instruction in small groups for 50 minutes a day three times per week while middle school students have a regular daily class period for gifted instruction. PHS gifted students have a quarterly one-on-one meeting with a gifted instructor who provides resources specific to that student's needs and interests, such as mentorships, internships, scholarships, summer camps/activities, or college/career readiness activities.
Student Voices on Gifted Education
“We learn about different things than in our regular class. Sometimes we are learning things we already know in our regular class, so we come in here to learn even more.” Skye Crowley, 2nd Grade
“It’s more challenging than the normal class. We play chess and our gifted library has higher level books. We also learned complex reasoning and creative thinking in our gifted bootcamp.” Satsuki Akita, 2nd Grade
“I like how we are all the same, but so different because we have different strengths and weaknesses. I feel like gifted class challenges me more than some of my other classes. I like that we have units each year where we learn about something new. This year we learned about politics and 3D printing.” Natalie Doran, 6th Grade
“We all can understand each other on a different level. We can communicate well whenever we are talking and share our understanding.” Selene Jones, 7th grade