Gifted Education Programs

The Enrichment program provides students of high academic and intellectual ability a designated time to explore concepts in greater depth and further development of the critical thinking processes through a 5-hour per week pullout program. Enrichment programs are currently offered at four of our sixteen elementary schools. Eligible students in schools without an Enrichment center are offered transportation to a school with an Enrichment Center.

The GESP provides full day services to identified gifted students through academic domain strengths. Verbal Domain Grouping will provide gifted students with opportunities to engage in intellectually stimulating endeavors with peers who are equally capable of learning at comparable levels. Purposeful grouping of students has been shown to increase intellectual engagement and qualitatively affect measurable academic growth. Homerooms will provide students opportunities to explore content areas with depth, complexity, and pacing suited to their intellectual abilities. The CogAT Verbal domain, our best indicator of reading and comprehension potential, will be used to assign students to homerooms for literacy, social studies and science, since success in these subjects is most closely correlated with verbal ability. Student service in the math domain will be determined by academic performance on placement tests. Students will then be assigned to math classrooms, at appropriate levels, with opportunities for content and process differentiation.

Cherry Crest Elementary School
12400 NE 32nd Street
Bellevue, WA 98005

Students feed into Cherry Crest from: Ardmore, Bennett, Clyde Hill, Medina, Sherwood Forest, Stevenson

Spiritridge Elementary School
16401 SE 24th Street
Bellevue, WA 98008

Students feed into Spiritridge from: Eastgate, Enatai, Lake Hills, Newport Heights, Phantom Lake, Somerset, Woodridge

The Prism program provides students of exceptionally high academic and intellectual ability with a challenging, accelerated, integrated and enriched curriculum in the core subjects and the stimulation of working with highly capable peers. Prism is offered in single and multi-grade classrooms, grades 4-5 at Spiritridge Elementary and Cherry Crest and grades 6-8 at Odle Middle School. Eligible Bellevue School District students are offered transportation to these schools.

In the GHSP, students of exceptionally high academic and intellectual ability are grouped in a cohort in the core areas of English, history, science and math. Placement in each area is based on knowledge and skill level. In grades 10 & 11 students enroll in the International Baccalaureate (IB) program with the goal that they complete IB degrees at the end of the 11th grade. The 12th grade curriculum includes college classes and internships.

A cognitive abilities test and a reading achievement subtest(s) are administered to students who have applied for the Gifted programs. The CogAT measures general and specific reasoning abilities in three areas: verbal - reasoning with words and sentences, quantitative - quantitative concepts and relations and nonverbal - figural concepts expressed in pictures.

Testing time is about 2 hours for first grade students, divided up into six sections that take about 20 minutes to complete. Breaks may be given between the sections. Questions on the verbal and quantitative sections are read to the students at this grade level. They choose an answer in the answer booklet by making a mark in a circle under the picture or letter that they think is the correct answer. In the non-verbal section, students see three pictures and choose the next picture in the pattern from four choices.

Testing time for 2nd - 9th graders is about 2 1/2 hours with some breaks given between sections. Students read the questions themselves. All questions are multiple choice. The sections are timed. Students mark their answers on an answer sheet that can be read by a computer.

The IOWA test of Basic Skills Reading subtest(s) are administered to students in grades 1-7. The Iowa Test of Educational Development Reading subtest(s) are administered to students in grades 8 and 9. Testing time is about 40 minutes for 1st graders and 55 minutes for 2nd - 4th graders. Testing time for 5th - 9th graders varies from 70 to 92 minutes.