The purpose of the Target program is to provide instruction for the gifted students in order to facilitate their becoming independent learners.
The overall goals of the Target Program are: 1) to improve research and discussion skills; 2) to promote the higher level thinking skills in Bloom’s Taxonomy; 3) enrich and enhance the academic base of knowledge; 4) to foster creative/productive thinking; 5) to provide experiences with the eight multiple intelligences; and 6) to embrace technological advances. Instruction is typically two years above grade placement.
These goals are achieved through a differentiated curriculum program in which students are involved in activities which are more advanced, more mature, more sophisticated and more complex in three areas: content, process and expectations. The content is often multi-disciplined, designed not only to broaden a child’s base of general knowledge but to also enhance the child’s ability to think productively and creatively. Content is organized in a series of mini-courses, or units, on varying topics. Each of the units includes one or more of the following content areas: language arts, mathematics, social studies and science. The curriculum is process based, not content based, and the higher level process skills of analysis, synthesis and evaluation are stressed. Therefore, because the content and processes are more complex, the expectations of performance are higher.
At the elementary level, gifted students participate in the Target Program one academic school day each week with a resource teacher. These units emphasize areas such as creative problem solving, simulations, logic, computer science, research and the encouragement of independent study.
