Piedmont Middle School - Berryessa Union School District

     Gifted and Talented Education is a special program within the daily curriculum here at Piedmont Middle School.  In keeping with recent state education changes, GATE services are primarily delivered as differentiated instruction within the regular classroom curriculum.  Though we wish to supplement the GATE instruction, we usually would offer several enrichment opportunities in after school classes, but the California budget cuts eliminated funding for GATE.


Special Programs for 2009-10

 

Possible trip to The Tech Museum, likely in January.

 

 

7th/8th Grade --> Future Cities competition. 

Use Sim City 4 to design a prototype city of the future and then use modeling materials to build a scale model city.  The design challenge, with the help of a volunteer local engineer, shoule start in mid-September and conclude with the Nor Cal competion in mid January.

 

 

Sim City 4 - video powered by Metacafe

 

 

 

January 2008 GATE Field Trip to the
 Tech Museum of Innovation
Photostream on FlickR

4th Annual GATE Sponsored
Piedmont Middle School Spelling Bee
Wednesday, January 13th, 2:40 PM
Piedmont MS Library
   

At Piedmont Middle, we also offer the following GATE services:

  • Accelerated Mathematics: Through testing at the end of 5th grade, students are placed in the appropriate Math class, even if that is higher than the typical class for a student's grade level.
  • GATE Newspaper and Web Development Class for 6th, 7th and 8th graders, taught by Mr. Ausman.
  • Afterschool Enrichment Classes: Planned for this year-  NONE due to state budget cuts, unless parents wish to do fundraising, except for Future Cities, which will be part of Mr. Curry's after-school computer game club 2 Fridays per month.
  • Educational Academic Competitions: National Geographic Geography Bee and the Scripps National Spelling Bee.  They will be open to all students, with the expectation that many GATE students will advance.
  •  GATE Parent Meetings: We will hold several Piedmont GATE Advisory/Parent Meetings throughout the year.  In addition, the Berryessa Union School District conducts 4 GATE Parent workshops periodically during the year.  Those GATE district workshops will be held at the district office from 7:00-8:30P.M. at dates TBA
   

Updated 20 January 2008 1 1 1