Our Program
Director's Message
I would like to welcome you and your child to St. Elmo Center for the Gifted.
Gifted students in the elementary school grades are served using the Gifted Resource Model. At St. Elmo Center for the Gifted we serve students in grades first through fifth. Students are served once a week through a pull-out program. Individual elementary schools are assigned a specific day of the week that their gifted identified population is picked up at their home school and transported to St. Elmo Center for the Gifted to be served. Students attending the center are excused from the class work and homework assigned in their regular classroom on the day they attend St. Elmo Center for the Gifted. Hannan Academy and Clubview Elementary School serve their gifted students in house due to their magnet program specifications.
At St. Elmo, we utilize Problem-Based Learning (PBL) to drive our instruction. PBL consists of complex, real-world problems as a way to promote student learning of concepts and principles. Our teachers also extend the learning which is occurring at the home schools. At the end of the first semester, we will host PBL Showcase Nights in which students will present the work that they have been engaged in over the first half of the school year. We also look forward to having multiple opportunities for our parents to visit the center and see what your students are learning and creating.
We focus on developing 21st Century Skills in our classrooms throughout the school year. Skills such as critical thinking, communication skills, problem solving, creativity, perseverance, collaboration, technology skills and digital literacy are incorporated into our lessons. As a gifted facility, it is important that we constantly raise the rigor, focus on the development of individual talents, and challenge our students on a daily basis.
I am thrilled to be working with such a talented group of educators and amazing students. Gifted education has always been my passion and it is my hope that your child will find his/her participation in the gifted program full of rich experiences that will inspire their love of learning. It is with great enthusiasm that I welcome those of you who are new and those of you who are returning to our program. I look forward to serving your children. Please contact me at any time if I can be of assistance.
Sincerely,
Dr. Jennifer Roe
Odyssey of the Mind
at St. Elmo
Odyssey of the Mind is a creative problem-solving program for students ranging in age from kindergarten through college. Students work on teams to solve problems creatively! These problems foster creativity and teamwork in a very short time period. The Odyssey of the Mind program is based on the premise that creativity can be taught. Try and think of anyone who fits any of these descriptions…the talented student that is “naturally” creative; the student whose talents require nurturing; the student who does not think of herself as creative, but feels she is “different” than her peers; or the student with untapped potential but no outlet for it to thrive? Odyssey of the Mind provides that outlet in an environment where almost every type of student will thrive. The program can provide much more than teaching students how to think: it augments the lessons taught in the classroom and allows students to apply what they’ve learned to different situations. We are primarily incorporating spontaneous problem solving, which includes verbal, hands-on verbal, and hands-on problems. We are excited about utilizing components of the Odyssey of the Mind program in our daily instruction with our gifted students.
