Middle School Highly Capable Services

The curriculum for students in the middle school Challenge Program is the same as the rest of the students at their grade level  but designated courses are taught with the needs of highly capable students in mind. Students will learn by working alone, in pairs, and in small groups. They will be learning to base their thinking on facts; discussions are often part of classes.

In Middle School, students are assigned highly capable classes for language arts, social studies, and science. Students are assigned to math courses individually.

In Middle School Challenge classes teachers organize instruction in their classes to meet these program goals:

• Classes use curricular standards to create lessons designed to fit the needs of all highly capable students
• All students are learning about new concepts and ideas
• Thinking, creativity, and problem solving are parts of learning
• All students work with one another
• There is a focus on the specific needs of highly capable children
• Instruction in the classes is paced to meet the needs of curious learner 

Earned Honors provides an opportunity to deepen learning for all students who are demonstrating mastery of grade-level standard(s) and showing potential to benefit from enhanced work based on their strengths and learning needs.

Work will be done as rigorous grade level content taught in their grade level class. Earned Honors tasks will be available in conjunction with instruction of the grade level skills, as determined by set standards in Language Arts, Social Studies and Science.

Earned Honors will be noted in report card grade comments when student completes an extension of their current learning and demonstrates proficiency with the new and independent application measured against the standard rubric.  Students can earn the notation in one or more standards.

Earned Honors is available at Cascade, Chinook, Glacier, Pacific and Sylvester Middle Schools

What you may see in Earned Honors:

Teachers will determine how to differentiate instruction to deliver these services to your student. Examples may include:

Rigorous Content - giving students more rigorous content and more challenging assignments

Curriculum Compacting - replacing lesson content that students have mastered

Addition of depth and/or complexity - student work that includes more information or problem-solving steps

Problem-based learning - students learn about a subject through solving an open ended problem

Project-based learning - students work to solve a real world problem or answer a complex question

Tiered assignments - tasks that are similar to the whole class with different levels of instruction