Barrington 220’s Gifted Program
Hough Street Elementary School has become a powerhouse in an international competition called the Knowledge Master Open. Not only did the team take first place both times the contest was offered in 2009, but the students posted the second-highest overall score for the fifth-grade division in the contest’s history. Teams from the school have placed first in the competition 11 times since 1996, and have missed the top spot only once since 2006.
The students on the Hough School team are all part of Barrington 220’s gifted program, officially called Extended Services. They belong to the district’s self-contained classes for third through fifth grade, which means they scored in the top 2 percent in their grade level and attend Hough School even if they live within another school’s boundaries. As students in the self-contained program, their entire school day is devoted to gifted education.
“In a regular classroom, these are students who would be pulled out for a period a day for math or for a period of English,” says Georgia Nelson, who teaches the self-contained fifth-grade class at Hough School. “For children whose needs really can’t be met in a general program, those are the students who are sent here,” says Maggie Gruber, who teaches the combined third- and fourth-grade class.
Georgia and Maggie have turned the Knowledge Master Open (KMO) into a combined class project and agree it is a highlight of the school year. A competition offered by the educational software company Academic Hallmarks, the KMO takes place twice a year in January and March and its format is a timed, online quiz consisting of 100 multiple-choice questions. The contest usually lasts about an hour. “It’s very intense,” Maggie says.
The Hough School students participate in the KMO’s fifth-grade division even though more than half the children on the team are in third or fourth grade (the contest rules allow any student up through fifth grade to participate in the division). The third graders hold their own as students deliberate answers. “What I love about Knowledge Master is that every child is valued for what they can contribute,” Maggie says, adding, “I really appreciate the way they [fifth-graders] honor my younger kids.”
Teaching Teamwork
The Hough School team also is unusually large among KMO competitors. A team size between five and 15 is the norm, but 33 Hough School students participated in the March contest. If that seems like an unfair advantage, ask any teacher how easy it is to get a classroom of elementary school students to concentrate on the same project for an hour or longer.
But such concentration is key to the team’s success, says Parker Bach, a fifth-grader in Georgia’s class this year who held the important position of sitting at the computer to input the answers. “Other teams ask us, ‘How do you get that many kids to work together well?’ And the answer to that is we’re completely focused on the contest. There are no side conversations,” Parker says.
That ability to focus points to another reason Maggie and Georgia consider the KMO a valuable project. Gifted students often tend to be individualists, Maggie says, and the KMO teaches them teamwork. “This is what these children need but don’t often get,” she says. Georgia adds, “The part that we love the most about the KMO is when they’re trying to work out an answer and work as a team.”
The self-contained classes have been at Hough School since Barrington 220 initiated its gifted program in the 1980s. Maggie believes Hough School’s central location and small size (the 2008-09 enrollment was 300 students) makes it the ideal home for the self-contained program. “It’s easier for our kids to assimilate here,” she says. Hough Street Principal Becky Gill says, “The kids are really interfused with the other kids at Hough. … They’re really an integral part of the school. They’re not viewed as, ‘Oh, those other kids.’”
Posing a Challenge
Maggie has taught Hough School’s self-contained third- and fourth-grade class for 21 years. Georgia came to Hough School five years ago, and taught gifted students for seven years before that. They believe their classrooms are important because they may challenge students who have found school too easy. These are students who, in first or second grade, were reading Harry Potter or doing long division. “Learning at an advanced level was more effortless for them in their early years,” says Julie Luck Jensen, the district’s director of Extended Services.
When students arrive in a gifted class, whether it is the self-contained program or a pull-out class, for many of them it marks the first time that school material requires them to think hard. “You don’t want them to easily earn straight As,” Julie says. “You want them to work.”
Beth Bach, Parker’s mother, remembers that her son was starting to lose
interest in school during second grade, but that his attitude changed once he entered the self-contained third-grade class. “Immediately, the fire in him was reignited for learning. He became a much happier child,” she says.
Parker agrees. “I love school. Now the classes are more challenging. It really works my brain.” Duncan Nyland, a 12-year-old in Extended Services, remembers the transition from second grade to Maggie’s class. “It was definitely challenging,” he says.
“It has to be hard. I want it to be hard,” Maggie says. “I want them to understand the experience of working hard and succeeding.” Georgia adds, “These kids won’t reach their potential if they don’t develop a work ethic.”
“Smart People Try”
Twelve-year-old Catie Olson, who recently finished sixth grade at Barrington Middle School-Station Campus, had to step up her efforts at reading comprehension when her class was assigned Julius Caesar. “Shakespeare is particularly challenging,” she says. “You have to read it several times to understand what they’re saying.” But the extra reading paid off. “It’s getting suspenseful,” she says as she approached Act II. “It’s enticing.”
Worse than students not being challenged or interested in school, the teachers and administrators agree, is students assuming that learning always will come easily. Julie says that bright students who haven’t been nurtured or challenged by a gifted program at an early age often come undone when they enter high school or college and the academic load suddenly becomes demanding. Georgia says that when students learn without having to try, one consequence is a belief that trying to learn is a sign of failure. “They may think trying means you are not smart,” Georgia says. “Our mantra is that smart people try.”
Fitting In
Besides offering their students the opportunity to be challenged, Maggie and Georgia say their classrooms allow the children to feel comfortable with their intelligence. “For the first time in many of these students’ lives, they have peers,” Maggie says. “It’s safe to be unique. It’s safe to let people know your interest in quarks.”
Gifted students often develop a passion for a peculiar subject. The teachers remember a fourth-grader who had an encyclopedic knowledge of carnivorous plants. The boy was flabbergasted the following year when a third-grader entered the program who knew just as much about the
botanical oddities.
Meeting Varied Needs
The self-contained classrooms are just one aspect of Extended Services, Julie says. Other elementary students are served by replacement classes, commonly known as pull-out classes. Instead of their regular English or math classes, the students go to another classroom for extended English or math. Students in these classes work at two levels above their grade. “It’s rigorous,” Julie says.
Trent Moorman participates in extended math and English classes at Barbara B. Rose Elementary School. In fourth grade this past year he enjoyed reading and discussing such books as Tuck Everlasting and The Secret Garden. “With harder conversations and harder books,” Trent says, “it’s more fun and even easier to learn.”
When they get to middle school, students in the gifted program are assigned to teams in sixth grade. They follow the same schedule, which includes extended reading and language arts classes, throughout the day except for math. Extended math is a separate sequence, Julie says. In seventh and eighth grade, students in the program can take extended classes but are not all on the same team.
Once at Barrington High School, students in the gifted program can schedule honors gifted or advanced placement courses. Sara Dombek, a 14-year-old who will be a sophomore at Barrington High School this fall, took honors gifted English and history classes her freshman year and will take honors chemistry over the summer. “If you are willing to take on a challenge,” Sara says, “you take more difficult classes.”
Supportive Parents
Julie, who has been involved in gifted education for more than 20 years, took charge of Extended Services 2.5 years ago. She was happy to come to Barrington because “it was one of the few places that still had a developed program.” The Illinois legislature eliminated funding for gifted education in 2003, and since then school districts across the state have cut or curtailed gifted programs. Families move into Barrington 220 because of its gifted program, Julie says.
“We have a really extensive, comprehensive gifted program in our district,” says Pooja Chatterji, co-president of the Barrington Council for the Gifted and Talented (BCGT). This group was founded in 1989 and functions as “sort of a PTO for the gifted program,” says Co-President Mindy Vlk. The group offers programs for families in the gifted program, including social opportunities such as game nights and book clubs.
Julie says the BCGT is part of the strong parental support for Extended Services. Barrington 220 does not sponsor the BCGT, which is open to all parents in the district, but the group cooperates with district officials. “There’s definitely a great deal of mutual respect between us and the administration,” Mindy says. “We all have the same goal.”
Challenging Perceptions
Part of that goal is to advocate for gifted education and to address myths about it such as claims of elitism. “There’s this misconception that it’s about how to get these kids who already are ahead and to get them that much more ahead,” Mindy says. “And it’s really not.”
Julie, who is also past-president of the Illinois Association for Gifted Children, adds, “We’re not saying that these kids are better than other kids. But they’re different. Their needs are different, and you want to challenge them like you want to challenge all students.”
The students may be different, but that does not make them socially inept — another common assumption. Georgia notes that in the past school year’s student council elections at Hough School, students from her classroom won three of the four offices. “They are all very socially ‘ept,’” she says.
Nor are gifted students uncoordinated and terrified of sports. “We have kids who are champion swimmers, champion soccer players,” Georgia says. “We have just as much athletic diversity in our classrooms as in any classroom,” Maggie adds.
Sara Dombek may download anthropology lectures for her iPod, but she also plays tennis a lot. Jenna Moorman may enjoy advanced mathematics, but she also was on Station Middle Campus’ pom squad. Parker Bach may have written a 27,000-word novel in fifth grade, but he also loves baseball, fencing, and — that supposed bane of brainy children — dodge ball.
Maggie and Georgia’s students found a more fashionable way to subvert their stereotyped images. When the students received their awards for winning the Knowledge Master Open, they declared the plain white T-shirts too nerdy. So, they threw a tie-dying party to make their prizes funky because, like any other students, sometimes they just want to have fun.
For more information on gifted education, visit these Web sites:
- Barrington Council for the Gifted and Talented, www.bcgt.org
- Illinois Association for Gifted Children, www.iagcgifted.org
Placement in Gifted Programs
Students placed in Barrington 220’s extended services program, commonly known as gifted classes, are selected through a combination of scores on cognitive ability and achievement tests and teacher recommendation, says program director Julie Luck Jensen.
“We obviously look at the scores,” Julie says, “but we look beyond that, too.” Administrators and teachers also take into account other ways students reveal the depth and sophistication of their thoughts.
Under earlier district guidelines, students who scored in the top 5 percent of their grade level academically were placed in the extended services program. Julie says that no longer is the case. “We go beyond 5 percent to look at the whole child,” she says. “We consider other ways a child may demonstrate critical thinking and in-depth learning.”
Currently, 760 students in third to eighth grade are in the extended services program, which includes extended art classes. Keeping track of the number of gifted students at Barrington High School becomes difficult, she says, because of the overlap among honors, honors gifted, and advanced placement classes.
Julie points out that advanced placement classes are for all high-performing students and are not exclusively for gifted students. “Some people think that if their children aren’t in gifted classes from elementary or middle school, they won’t get into AP classes, and that’s not true,” she says.
Competing Knowledge
Hough Street Elementary School is not the only Barrington school to excel in the Knowledge Master Open (KMO). Barrington Middle School-Station Campus also posted high marks in this year’s contests.
In the January KMO, a five-member team placed second worldwide in the sixth-grade division. A larger team from Station Campus also participated in the KMO’s middle school division (open to students through eighth grade), which took place in December and March. Both times the 18-member team placed first in Illinois, ranking seventh worldwide in December and 17th worldwide in March.
Not all team members are in Barrington 220’s gifted program, says team coach Jeff Price, who teaches math at Station and Prairie campuses. Even though their ranking slipped between the two outings, the students’ score improved from 1,588 to 1,603 out of a possible 2,000. The middle school division contains twice as many questions, 200, as the fifth- and sixth-grade divisions.
Those students who participated in the KMO events also belong to Station Campus’ 25-member Scholastic Bowl team, which finished 55-1 this year and was conference champion. “What we did with Knowledge Master at Station was secondary to what we did in Scholastic Bowl,” Jeff says.
Tim Haupt, Station Campus assistant principal, is proud of the students’ accomplishments in both competitions. “I believe these results reflect the talent level of our students and the strong academic level at Station Campus and throughout the district,” Tim says.
KMO began in 1983 with 72 schools participating and now annually attracts more than 3,000 schools and 45,000 participants from around the world, but primarily from the United States.
Test Your Knowledge
Here are a few fifth- and sixth-grade Knowledge Master Open sample questions:
1) Who was killed by Redcoats?
A. Daniel Boone
B. Davy Crockett
C. James Madison
D. Crispus Attucks
E. John Wilkes Booth
2) A person who is running for a political office has thrown his hat into the ...
A. box
B. ring
C. fray
D. wind
E. street
3) You won $60,000 in the lottery. You keep 1/3 and divide the rest equally among your 5 brothers and your 3 favorite teachers. Each of their shares amounts to how much?
A. $3500
B. $4000
C. $4500
D. $5000
E. $5500
More questions and information can be found at the Knowledge Master Open Web site: www.greatauk.com.
Answers: 1) D, 2) B, 3) D
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Jeffrey Westhoff is a freelance writer who lives in Palatine.