Nurturing Program

1. Nurturing Program Public Schools of Robeson County

2. What is Nurturing? Our K-2 Nurturing program offers enrichment and higher order thinking skills for those students in kindergarten through 2nd grade who are currently working above grade level. It helps develop thinking strategies and further introduces students to convergent, divergent, visual, and evaluative thinking.

3. Screening Process • Teachers will conduct 2-3 lessons in the regular classroom using the Primary Education Thinking Skills curriculum which: • is a systematized enrichment and diagnostic thinking skills program suitable for kindergarten through the primary grades. • aligns to the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. • presents lessons in convergent analysis, divergent synthesis, evaluation, and visual/spatial thinking. • provides diagnostic checklists for each type of thinking. • helps build behavioral portfolios on talented learners that support a differentiated approach to their education. •  integrates flexibly into any existing primary curriculum. • includes detailed lesson plans, instructional stories, and student materials. • offers opportunities for learners with different strengths to shine! • is engaging and fun!

4. Identification The AIG teacher, in collaboration with the regular classroom teacher, will decide, based on the P.E.T. checklist, those students who would benefit from nurturing services. The number of students chosen from each class at each grade level will be determined by the AIG teacher and regular classroom teachers depending on the number of classes per grade level. The top 10 students at each grade level will receive nurturing services.

5. Timeline Teachers conduct lessons at the beginning of the year starting with 2nd grade, then 1st, then kindergarten. Pull-out classes should be established by January of each school year.

6. Justification By conducting whole group lessons, regular classroom teachers will have an idea of the gifted curriculum and expectations of those in the nurturing program. Also, the regular classroom teacher and the AIG teacher will collaborate to determine those who could benefit from the nurturing program based on the gifted checklist and high performance in the regular classroom. Parents will be notified before pull-out takes place.

7. Requirements Students must maintain high performance in the regular classroom and in the nurturing program. Nurturing students will possibly be tested in 3rd grade.

8. Yearly Process • Each year we will conduct whole group lessons in the classrooms to determine who will be pulled out in small groups according to these skills: Kindergarten-patterns (divergent, visual) First grade -choices (convergent, evaluative) Second grade-one and many (visual, divergent) • Note: Students in K-2 will be nurtured. Formal identification for AIG services will begin in third grade.

9. Important information to remember Our nurturing program starts over at the beginning of each school year. Students who have previously been in the nurturing program may or may not be in the program again the new school year. We follow the selection criteria addressed in this PowerPoint for choosing our nurturing students K-2 each school year. Remember we select the top ten students per grade level for the nurturing program in grades K-2.