Highly Capable Information

Pullman School District strives to recognize, support, and encourage the unique needs of highly capable students and to provide challenging and invigorating curriculum and opportunities

Confidentiality is maintained during all steps of the process.

Definition of Highly Capable

The Pullman School District recognizes the state definition of highly capable students as students who perform or show potential for performing at significantly advanced academic levels when compared with others of their age, experience, and environments. Outstanding abilities are seen within students’ general intellectual aptitudes, specific academic abilities, and/or creative productivities within a specific domain. Highly capable students may possess, but are not limited to, the following learning characteristics:

Capacity to learn with unusual depth of understanding, to retain what has been learned, and to transfer learning to new situations;
Capacity and willingness to deal with increasing levels of abstraction and complexity earlier than their chronological peers;
Creative ability to make unusual connections among ideas and concepts;
Ability to learn quickly in their area(s) of intellectual strength; and
Capacity for intense concentration and/or focus

The Pullman School District Highly Capable Program seeks to identify the most highly capable students in our district who will benefit the most from highly capable services. A student will be identified as highly capable, and therefore qualify for highly capable services, if he/she meets criteria on two of the three state defined areas noted below:

Academic abilities
Intellectual aptitude (cognitive)
Creativity

Characteristics of Highly Capable Children

Observing characteristics of highly capable students is often difficult when we are dealing with obviously bright children. The chart below is helpful in seeing the subtle differences between the bright child and the highly capable learner.


Bright Child	Highly Capable Learner
Knows the answers	Asks the questions
Is interested	Is highly curious
Is attentive	Is mentally and physically involved
Answers the questions	Discusses in detail, elaborates
Top group	Beyond top group
Listens with interest	Shows strong feelings and opinions
Learns with ease	Already knows
6‐8 repetitions for mastery	1‐2 repetitions for mastery
Understands ideas	Constructs abstractions
Enjoys peers	Prefers adults
Grasps the meaning	Draws inferences
Is receptive	Is intense
Copies accurately	Creates a new design
Enjoys school	Enjoys learning
Absorbs information	Manipulates information
Technician	Inventor
Good memorizer	Good guesser
Enjoys straightforward, sequential presentation	Thrives on complexity
Is alert	Is keenly observant
Is pleased with own learning	Is highly self‐critical

Additional Examples of Characteristics of the Highly Capable Learner:
Advanced Vocabulary Experiments with Ideas	Curiosity (Asks Endless Questions) Sophisticated Sense of Humor	Perfectionist Advanced Creativity

PullmanPublic Schools