High Five: February 2026

We are entering the era of state summative testing and counting down the days until Spring Break! Hold on tight, it's about to get bumpy! How can we still interntionally plan for our high ability students when our days are filled to the max? Check out below for a couple of ideas.

Provide students with opportunities to dig deeper and have choices. Not all students demonstrate their learning in the same way—and that’s where differentiating products becomes powerful. By offering a variety of options for how students show what they know—such as presentations, written responses, creative projects, or digital media—teachers can tap into different strengths, interests, and learning styles.

When students are given choice in their final product, they are more engaged and better able to showcase their understanding in a meaningful way. Differentiated products maintain high expectations while allowing flexibility in format, ensuring every learner has an opportunity to succeed and feel confident in their abilities.

Here is an example with a 2nd gr. CKLA connection

Product Options:

Journal/Diary

Comic Strip

Learning Center

Video

Exhibit

Game

We purchased a Starlab for Perry Township with the goal of using it to enrich curriculum with high ability students in particular. It is available for use with all students though! We had representatives from a few schools go through training with it. A trained person is needed to put it up, take it down, and train others for use. Here is the calendar to reserve it below. Before you reserve it, please check with your HA building rep to see if someone from your building was present at the training and coordinate dates with them as well, just in case I am not able to be at your building the whole time that you are using it.

Starlab Reservation Calendar

We have used it at Rosa Parks and Mary Bryan. We have identified success criteria as we are learning to use the system. It is helpful that the teacher leads the discussion to point out particular constellations, planets, or connect with stories that the students have learned. That gives the person at the computer time to navigate the program. We can be as structured or unstructured as you would like! We try to learn something new every time we use it, so we will also pop in to ask questions and teach, but it is helpful for the teacher to guide the students with connections to previous learning. Along with this, once you reserve, please email Kim Jovic with a time to meet before the day of use to go over what topics will be covered and expectations for both of us.

Grounds will deliver the equipment to each building in the gym or designated area (approved by Kim Jovic) that you put on the calendar invite (add it to the location). In most cases, the Starlab needs to be used in the gym, because of the height. Please arrange using the gym before reserving the Starlab with the physical education teacher and notify your administration team. In most instances it only takes half the gym and they can use the other half without disruption to either party. Once reserved, please email Kim when you plan to use the Starlab on the specific dates and times. That helps me to make sure that I am there or our wonderful instructional technology specialists to support!

I have been teaching for 22 years. Yet I still fall into the trap of assuming my high ability kids will just get it. They will figure it out. They already know. Time and time again, I learn they don’t. In cluster we were working on making thinking visible for stronger student work and I found that when I slacked on the model, their thinking slacked, too. I drew this conclusion from some informal action research we had to share during cluster to our colleagues.

For the research, I stuck with typical assumptions that the high ability class didn’t need me to model everything. I gave a quick, verbal model and sent them to work. In my blocked language arts class, I took time to do the thinking in the model together. We wrote down and organized the whole group thinking together. Then I sent them to work. The results were clear. My high ability class left thinking on the paper that was less than desirable for their potential and the level of thinking I expect in my classroom. My other classes left deep thinking that exceeded my expectations. So, the group that we always assume will do great thinking on their own didn’t do that and it’s because of the lack of visual modeling with that group.

The first strategy was called “which one doesn’t belong?” I asked both groups the same question while they analyzed multiple images. However, I modeled deeper thinking with the non-HA classes and didn’t model any thinking with the high ability group. Look at the images below. You can see the high ability answers were low level and some were even wrong. The other students’ responses were not simple- about whether there was a human or a cat in the picture- but instead they were about animal cruelty, free will, logical fallacies, and influence. How was I able to elicit deeper thinking from one group over the other? Modeling the level of thinking I expected.

The second strategy was called “chalk talk.” Students analyzed an advertisement and added their thinking around the ad. It was clear that the group who had better modeling had stronger responses over the group who only had quick, verbal instructions. In the picture below, you can see one group discussing pressure, availability, focus, and more. These students analyzed evidence and drew a strong conclusion because I modeled how to do that by thinking out loud and displaying the thinking on the document camera. The second group wrote vague responses and didn’t focus on analysis. They drew quick conclusions and wrote vague ideas like “vaping makes you happier” or “yellow captivates”. This is not strong thinking. Their weak thinking is strictly because they received instructions but didn’t receive modeling on how to think deeper.

Through our Broad Based Planning Committee process, we built a parent and student survey that consists of 10 questions total about identification, curriculum, social/emotional support, and resources that parents and students need. We presented this information at our BBPC on 2/18. Check out the slides below to get a glimpse of the results. We analyzed themes and those will be used to form our goals and services for next year.

The group who performed better in both visible thinking activities was a non-HA section, not a high ability class. The conclusion we can draw from this small action research on the two visible thinking routines is that a student’s label isn’t an indicator of strong thinking. A student’s success is dependent on the strong presentation of instructional content using modeling. This was an important reminder to me that just because high ability students have that designation, it doesn’t mean they already know the material or mastered the skill. It doesn’t mean I can skip through strong modeling and instruction for them. High ability students need strong instructional support, too (this was noted on our student survey feedback from our District HA survey).

Here is a link to all PD Opportunities on one document!

HA Identification Meeting:

4/22/26 PTEC 210, 4-5:30 p.m.

Gifted Guru Depth and Complexity:

Virtual at your own pace, Online

If you choose to complete this course, you can get paid for 10 hours (updated!) of out of school time to complete it. If you choose to enroll and complete it, just email me when you are complete and I will make sure that you get paid. It has all of the basics that you need to know and learn about our program and HA students in general. Click here to access the course: https://perryschools.instructure.com/enroll/H9NL79

We finished the CogAT for Kindergarten. The NWEA for kindergarten starts 3/2-3/13/26. The lists of students who scored an 80-95th percentile on Verbal, Quantitative, and/or Quant/Nonverbal are complete and will be sent out in a couple of weeks.

Our 2nd graders took the NWEA in November. I will be following up by sending teacher scales to teachers of students who are on the bubble of qualifying in February. This scale is called the SIGS-2 and you will get an email in your inbox if you have a student who meets this criteria.

You have access to Research Units in CKLA. We met with Melissa Browning and thought that these would be great options for a differentiated project for HA students during WIN time. Take a look at your grade level project. How could this be implemented in your classroom or school? Let your HA representative know if you are interested in piloting the unit for us to see if it is something that we should implement district wide. I have ordered each grade level set and have them here at PTEC. Here is a document with the ReadWorks articles cited in each unit. Lori Williams developed this helpful resource and we are adding other independent station resources that go with the units. If you have ideas to add to this document, please let me know. It is a work in progress.