Wapakoneta District Gifted Education Policy and Plan (Link Coming Soon)

Gifted Law in Ohio

The general public, and even some educators, believe that being gifted is synonymous with being smart.  Children are gifted when their ability is significantly above the norm for their age.  Although this is an overgeneralization of the process, if we randomly selected a group of 100 people of differing abilities, gave them and assessment of some kind of ability, and then put them in order of their test scores from 0-100, with 50 being average, those that scored a 95 or better would be considered, significantly above average and thus, "gifted".   To many, serving the needs of gifted students feels exclusive or privileged.  Theoretically, we should have just as many students that are significantly above the norm as we do students who are significantly below the norm.  However, in Wapakoneta, there are more students that are identified as being Gifted than we have students with significant disabilities.  

DEFINITION OF GIFTED AND TALENTED
Gifted children are those capable of high performance and have been identified by qualified persons. Children capable of high performance include those with demonstrated achievement and/or potential ability in any of the following areas:
• Superior Cognitive Ability
• Specific Academic Ability
• Creative and/or Productive Thinking
• Visual and/or Performing Arts

CHARACTERISTICS OF GIFTED CHILDREN
James T Webb, Ph.D., ABPP, compiled the following list of general characteristics of students identified as gifted or talented:
• Unusually large vocabulary
• Speaks in complex sentence structures
• Greater comprehension of language nuances
• Longer attention span and persistence in their interest areas
• Intensity of feelings or actions
• Wide range of interests (tunnel vision or grasshopper pattern)
• Strong sense of curiosity
• Able to learn more basic skills quickly
• Learn to read and write before school without instruction
• Unusually good memory
• Unusual sense of humor (particularly puns)