Early Talent Development: The GEAARS Program: Growing Elementary Advanced Academics Readiness in Students
Opportunities to discover, uncover, and grow gifted and advanced learner readiness abound from the minute the youngest students enter an FCPS school. FCPS’ strong commitment to the education of highly able and academically gifted students extends to include Early Talent Development in grades PreK-2. The GEAARS Program: Growing Elementary Advanced Academics Readiness in Students is an instructional model that provides all students opportunities to develop their talents and achieve their fullest potential. Research-informed instructional resources and strategies engage, challenge, and identify the strengths of our youngest students. Classroom teachers utilize these strategies to ignite and develop the potential of advanced performance in all primary students within the regular education setting.
GEAARS lessons are designed to level the playing field for primary students regardless of ethnicity or socio-economic status. These lessons allow teachers to observe exceptionality in the four core cognitive areas: memory, spatial skills, logic, and creativity. Lessons also identify and foster behaviors that contribute to academic and personal success: communicative, creative, inquisitive, leadership, perceptive, persistent, and resourceful.
Elementary Advanced Academics Teacher Specialists support schools in accomplishing the goals of Early Talent Development, which are to:
- provide lesson modeling and professional learning for quality implementation of the GEAARS Program.
- support teachers to effectively talent-spot students with exceptional ability and high potential.
- curate and develop resources and classroom strategies for teachers for ELA and mathematics
- compile a portfolio for each student’s scored artifacts for each aforementioned cognitive area and learning behavior. This portfolio is used for the potential identification of students to receive intermediate gifted and talented services and/or participation in the Young Scholars Program, which is located at specific school sites.