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Gifted Program

Who Are The Gifted?

Florida's Department of Education defines a gifted student as one who has superior intellectual development and is capable of high performance. Criteria for eligibility for the program includes:

  • Need for special program
  • Demonstration of a majority of characteristics for gifted students according  to a standard scale or checklist.
  • Superior intellectual development as measured by an intelligence quotient of two standard deviations or more above the mean on an individually administered standardized test of intelligence.

Cognitive Characteristics

  • Unusual retentiveness and the capacity to learn at faster rates; 
  • Advanced comprehension;  ​
  • Unusual capacity to manipulate;  
  • Unusually varied interest and curiosity;  
  • Advanced language development;  
  • Accelerated pace of thought process;  
  • Heightened capacity for seeing unusual and diverse relationships; 
  • Ability to generate original ideas and solutions;  
  • Early ability to generate original ideas and solutions;  
  • Early ability to use and form conceptual frameworks;  
  • Persistent, goal-directed behavior;  
  • Increased ability to find, solve, and act on problem;  
  • Early development of sophisticated thought process (e.g., thinking in alternatives, abstract terms, sensing consequences, making generalizations).

Affective Characteristics

  • Unusual emotional depth and sensitivity; 
  • Unusual sensitivity to expectations and feelings of others;  
  • Keen sense of humor;  
  • Heightened self-awareness accompanied by feelings of being different;  
  • Idealism and strong sense of justice;  
  • Early development of an inner focus of control;
  • Advanced levels of moral judgment.

*Adapted from Barbara Clark in Growing Up Gifted

Cindy Garber
Gifted Program Specialist

Email: cegarber@volusia.k12.fl.us 
Phone: 386-734-7190, ext. 44015

Debra Lane
Office Specialist

Email: dwlane@volusia.k12.fl.us  
Phone: 386-734-7190, ext. 44013