WATG 2024 Annual Conference

Increasing diversity and equity is a longstanding goal of gifted education. The fact remains that Brown and Black students and those living in poverty are glaringly missing, partly because most ability tests demand fluency in English and advanced academic knowledge. Learn an innovative method for identifying gifted students more equitably using tests that include verbal, quantitative and nonverbal measures with test items that can be solved in any language and require minimal academic knowledge.

Feeling overwhelmed by your new role as a G/T coordinator? Not sure where to start? This extended conference session will help guide you in developing some initial steps, including what questions you should ask and what to look for and think about as you either strengthen or build a gifted program in your school or district. Bring your questions, engage, and find a network to support you!

Please note that this is PART ONE of TWO.

This is PART TWO of this session.

Feeling overwhelmed by your new role as a G/T coordinator? Not sure where to start? This extended conference session will help guide you in developing some initial steps, including what questions you should ask and what to look for and think about as you either strengthen or build a gifted program in your school or district. Bring your questions, engage, and find a network to support you!

Educators must be thoughtful about how to support creative students, especially since the field of creativity can be broad-ranging and sometimes unwieldy. And yet, using creativity to help meet the needs of all students - especially those gifted students who are identified in the creative domain - is not only an admirable idea but a critical one. Doing so supports best practices, and more importantly, the students in your classroom or school. Sternberg (2006) talks about the need to “...improve instruction by teaching for creativity as well as teaching students to think creatively” (p. 87). If we are to Imagine, Innovate, and Inspire, let’s use Sternberg’s wise counsel as our guide.

This session will explore a variety of definitions of creativity (i.e., Torrance, May, Sternberg, and more) as well as various programming ideas (i.e., SCAMPER, QFT, CPS, and more). Please note that this session is a condensed version of DPI’s 2023-24 Transforming G/T Teaching and Learning meetings that focused on the theme of creativity.

In the Hamilton School District, we spent the last 3 years developing and implementing our new math vision which states: Where all mathematical learners are valued, and all learners are driven by curiosity, inspired by challenges, and committed to deep, conceptual understandings in order to navigate the world as flexible thinkers and doers of mathematics. To realize this vision, we created choice, compacted pathways for middle school, a wide variety of content and pacing options for high school, and an applied-math certificate for graduating seniors who venture off the "beaten path" of traditional math learning. Our comprehensive new programming took many hands focused on many minute details. In the end, we've created an innovative new vision for 5-12 mathematics that will inspire our next-generation mathematicians!

Bring the WATG conference back home with you! You will leave with the necessary tools (including a power point on a flash drive) to mentor your district staff on Gifted 101. This session includes: WI GT laws, 5 areas of giftedness, strengths and challenges of gifted children, intensities, Du Four's BIG question, advocacy, programming options and working with the parents of gifted children. Participating schools with more than three conference attendees will receive one-on-one coaching with WATG consultants.

Please note this is PART ONE of TWO.

This is PART TWO of this session.

Bring the WATG conference back home with you! You will leave with the necessary tools (including a power point on a flash drive) to mentor your district staff on Gifted 101. This session includes: WI GT laws, 5 areas of giftedness, strengths and challenges of gifted children, intensities, Du Four's BIG question, advocacy and programming options. Participating schools with more than three conference attendees will receive one-on-one coaching with WATG consultants.