The West Haven School System believes that the talents of gifted students must be recognized and the gifted provided the opportunity to interact with other students equally talented. A stimulating learning environment is required to enable all gifted students to expand their creative and critical thinking abilities.

The goals of the Talented and Gifted Program are:

1. To assist the student in achieving higher levels of:

   • Critical thinking

   • Research skills Creative thinking

   • Problem Solving

   • Self-awareness and task commitment

2. To enhance a student's talents and gifts by providing:

   • An opportunity for interaction with one's intellectual peers

   • Access to a wide variety of resources

   • An atmosphere of questioning and risk taking

   • Opportunities for in-depth investigation and presentation

3. To support classroom teachers through:

   • Consultation

   • In service and workshops

   • Materials and activities

The West Haven Board of Education has a teacher devoted to the needs of the talented and gifted students in Grades 5 and 6, Ms. Bethany Luna, who is stationed at Carrigan Intermediate School.

The Talented and Gifted Program is designed to serve students who exhibit exceptional learning ability characterized by high IQ, high achievement and high motivation. Students in the top 5% of grades 5, and 6 in the school system will be chosen to participate.

The following instruments will be used to select students:

• Intelligence test

• Objective Behavioral Rating Scale

• Classroom performance, report cards and group test results

• Teacher recommendation

Books for Children

Encourage and assist your child in selecting books on topics of special interest to him or her. Any of the Newberry or Caldecott Award books are a good place to start. Nutmeg Award Books offers lists of recommended books.

Your public librarian can be a wonderful resource.

Games for Children
Below is a list of games that allow students to use higher-level thinking skills.

• Checkers

• Shuttles

• Chess

• Quatro

• Mancala

• Tantrix

• Jig Saw Puzzles 

• Chung Toi

• Tangrams

• Sudoku

• Apples to Apples

• and other word games

Websites for Parents

The West Haven School District subscribes to Renzulli Learning, http://renzullilearning.com/default.aspx. Parents are welcome to log in and use those resources with their children.

The following is a list of links that students in the program might find helpful in completing research projects.

• Clusty

• BBC

• Daily Dose of the Web

Reliable Resources

• PBS 

• National Geographic

• Smithsonian

• The History Channel

• Smithsonian

• How Stuff Works

• FBI

• Overview of Curriculum

• Curricula

• District Academic Coordinators

• Talented and Gifted Program