While the majority of students at Minnetonka Middle School East and Minnetonka Middle School West find appropriate levels of challenge within the general classroom settings, some students' needs are better met in other settings.
A variety of honors and accelerated courses are provided in 6th, 7th and 8th grade. These courses are designed to meet the needs of students who are functioning at an abstract level or have a very high ability in one or more of these subjects. Students must also demonstrate the motivation and work habits necessary to be successful with more rigorous curriculum.
High Potential Seminar is a yearlong course that meets once per week for all three years of middle school. The class is designed to meet the intellectual and social/emotional needs of gifted learners. Each grade level participates in three different thematic units. Units are designed according to the National Association for Gifted Children Standards, and they align with the District mission and vision for High Potential Learners.
To meet intellectual needs, units are designed to:
Present meaningful problems that are abstract, open-ended, multifaceted
Explore concepts and principles vs. facts and skills
Require leaps of insight and transfer
Integrate student interests and capitalize on reasoning strengths
To meet social/emotional needs, High Potential Seminar provides:
Consistent opportunity to work with intellectual peers
Ongoing support from a gifted educator who understands the gifted learner and can help with struggles a child may experience (e.g. perfectionism, intensities, underachievement, anxiety, etc.)
A safe context to share ideas
For further information, please contact the High Potential Teacher at your child's middle school:
Intellectually gifted. Gifted students with IQ nearly two standard deviations above the norm.
Program Goal
Engage, challenge and connect gifted learners. Provide multidisciplinary enrichment to ensure higher-order thinking development. Support unique social and emotional need through meaningful work with intellectual peers.
Program Structure
Pull-out. Small group pull-out once per week for one period; time of pull-out rotates weekly.
Identification
Standardized assessment data; teacher and parent input. Weighted matrix combines multiple data points - CogAT, WISC-V, KBIT2, or other reasoning aptitude assessment (130+ or 98%il); NWEA or MCA achievement scores; teacher and parent rating scales.
