INFORMATION ABOUT ADVANCED LEARNING PLANS
Dear Parents,
According to the guidelines set forth by the state of Colorado and the Poudre School District,
your child qualifies for an Advanced Learning Plan (ALP). The identification process involves
forming a “Body of Evidence” for students being considered for gifted education services. The
Body of Evidence includes the following categories:
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
95% and above on Cognitive Abilities Test (Example: CogAT)
AND
95% and above on a Standardized Achievement Test. (Examples: CSAP, MAPs)
Evaluation of “behavior characteristics” can also be used. (Example: SIGS- Scale for
Identifying Gifted and Talented)
Each Advanced Learning Plan must be entered into a new student information monitoring
system called Exceed. We have scheduled the following events over the next few weeks in
order to accomplish this task.
The following is only an EXAMPLE of one school’s ALP timeline for the year. Please add your
own.
October 2, 2009
All Math and English teachers received a list of 6th, 7th and 8th grade
students identified with Advanced Learning Plans enrolled in their
classes.
October 8, 2009
6th grade students with Advanced learning Plans will meet during ELO to
begin the process of determining desired student goals and possible
intervention strategies to be included in their Advanced Learning Plan.
These student generated ideas will be given to the Math or Language Arts
teacher responsible for the development and monitoring of each
student’s plan throughout the school year.
October 15, 2009
7th grade students will meet during ELO for the same purpose as outlined
above.
October 22, 2009
8th grade students will meet for the same purpose as outlined above.
During the 1st week of November all students with Advanced Learning Plans will have
individual conferences with their Math and/or Language Arts teachers to
discuss and refine the goals and interventions for their plan. This is when
the first draft of individual student’s Advanced Learning Plans will be
completed.
November 19, 2009 All parents of students identified for an Advanced Learning Plan will meet
for School’s Parent Education Night to discuss students’ plans. Parents
will have the opportunity to hear from Mary Nichols about the Poudre
School District’s identification process, will hear about the numerous
strategies the school’s teachers implement to help address the needs of
our advanced learners and will receive a draft of their child’s Advanced
Learning Plan for review. Additional handouts and resources for parents
of gifted children will be available, and there will be opportunity for
questions and answers regarding this important process.
November 30, 2009 During this scheduled Teacher Collaboration Day further staff
development regarding the nature and needs of gifted students, best
practices in the classroom and the efficient monitoring of Advanced
Learning Plans will take place.
December 15, 2009 All Advanced learning Plans will be finalized.
We suggest ALP’s be completed by November 1, 2010.
You may be interested to know that there are over ___ students with Advanced Learning Plans
at the school this year. We’ve examined our student achievement data as measured by the
Colorado Growth Model and have learned that the growth of our students in the “advanced”
category is among the highest growth percentile in the state of Colorado. We are excited to
continue challenging students to achieve high levels of learning. Please add any special
information you would like your GT parents to know! This is just an example.
If you have questions about this schedule for implementing Advanced Learning Plans at Kinard,
please contact ____________.