LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) - For students in the Albany County School District No. 1 GATE, or Gifted and Talented Education program, each day is an opportunity for growth and discovery.
The program is open to qualifying students in grades three-five, reported the Laramie Boomerang (https://bit.ly/2knW7rv).
Once accepted, ACSD No. 1 students begin attending Spring Creek Elementary School, where the magnet program is headquartered.
“We conduct a series of academic assessments, creativity assessments, ability assessments - a combination - and then look at that overall score, looking also at the needs of a student, because the goal of a program is to meet the needs of the student,” Spring Creek Principal Liann Brenneman said.
The program originally consisted of combined classrooms - third- and fourth-graders were grouped together, as were fifth- and sixth-graders, Brenneman said. Now that sixth-graders attend Laramie Junior High School, GATE consists of three classrooms, each housing students in a different grade level, though the several dozen students in the program typically visit one another’s classrooms throughout the day.
“We have the ability to really individualize,” Brenneman said. “So, for math, for example, we do a combination of both more in-depth work but also the opportunity to accelerate. So, our students are assessed at the beginning of each new unit, and if they’re a third-grader doing fifth-grade work, then we’re going to move them into a fifth-grade curriculum.”
Students also have the chance to work on in-depth projects, both at the individual and group levels, Brenneman said. For one past project, students conducted an energy survey of how energy was used in their homes, at Spring Creek and in the community and came up with recommendations for conserving energy.
“We increased our recycling because of them,” Brenneman said.
Andrea Hayden, the program’s fourth-grade teacher, said she enjoyed the freedom and flexibility to meet the students’ needs “in the way that best matches what those are.” For instance, students can often select their own books to read for the language arts component.
This year marks her 14th year with the GATE program, she said.
“Having been in the program for quite a while, I think that the biggest advantage for me is the students being in a peer group with each other, where they can build off of each other’s ideas, and where they are really encouraging and challenging each other, all day and every day, to be learning at the level that they are capable of,” she said.
One of the most significant benefits of the program is that it allows students to interact with peers with similar social, emotional and instructional needs, Brenneman said.
“We help students become self-advocates for their own needs and their own abilities,” she said. “If I’m a student who really needs to accelerate in math how do I communicate that both to my family and to my teachers? Many of our students learn very differently than a student in a traditional program, so they might need not just a very accelerated program but maybe a very different method of teaching.”
When students leave Spring Creek and move to LJHS, they’re able to continue taking courses that challenge them, Brenneman said.
“Some of them will skip sixth-grade and go right into seventh-grade math,” she said. “Some have gone right into algebra if they needed to be. (LJHS Principal Debbie Fisher) has some great opportunities for them with accelerated language arts classes and some honors-type classes.”
Students in the program said they enjoyed having the opportunity to go on field trips and challenge themselves.
“We get more challenges and learn more,” fourth-grader Lillian Murfitt said. “In science, we get to do much more experiments, and in math, it’s harder than in regular grades.”
Her classmate Rowyn Birdsley indicated she appreciated being able to participate in the program even when her family was out of town for several months.
“They still kept in touch and helped me with other schoolwork,” she said.
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Information from: Laramie Boomerang, https://www.laramieboomerang.com
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