Dr. Rowe Van Meter

Gifted Education Instructional Coach

602-304-2030 x3737

rvanmeter@laveeneld.org

About Our Classroom

Only 3-5 % of students qualify for gifted education. These students are identified through testing in the fall and spring. Identified students (95th percentile and above) participate in an enrichment program and receive services through their classroom teacher in their classroom.
Gifted learners have unique academic needs. Parents, educators, and the broader community have a responsibility to support all children as they reach for their personal best.
Parents can engage with their children to provide rich stimulation and learning experiences and discover ways to partner with schools and resources in the broader community to nurture their child’s specialized learning needs. Teaching gifted children may require special strategies like acceleration, cluster grouping and pull-out programing.

Classroom Information

6th grade engineering team at National MESA competition in Tucson, AZ. June 2019

For the 2019-2020 school year, gifted students will receive services in their core classes. The Gifted Instructional Coach will visit the students’ classrooms and support the classroom teacher with instruction within the curriculum. Since students are gifted all week long, their classroom teacher will use the supports provided to continue to challenge high-ability learners daily.

Some students will be pulled-out for services in groups. Students will receive approximately 1 hour to 2 hours of support per week depending on the school and grade.

Grades Kinder-5th will participate in Odyssey of the Mind, an international creative problem-solving program that engages students in their learning by allowing their knowledge and ideas to come to life in an exciting, productive environment. Odyssey problems have challenged students to design mechanical dinosaurs, invent new factory machinery, build working vehicles, write a new chapter to Moby Dick, put a twist on classic artworks, turn Pandora’s Box into a video game, and so much more. Check out the problems students will solve this year in the link below. We look forward to demonstrating these solutions at a family night this year! Hopefully, we can also attend a regional and state competition with some of our teams!

https://www.odysseyofthemind.com/2020ltproblems/

Grades 6th-8th will participate in MESA engineering. MESA is Math, Engineering, and Science Achievement sponsored by the University of Arizona. Students work in small group to engineer PVC bridges, bottle rockets, boats, and code Arduino Micro-controllers. The Laveen District has had several schools receive awards in MESA over the past few years including 1st and 2nd place overall in the middle school division and a team that has won the middle school Arizona state competition twice and advanced to nationals in 2018 and 2019.

All students in MESA compete in the Regional competition in February and State competition in April.

https://azmesa.arizona.edu/

In addition, all gifted students have additional assignments in Google Classroom they can use for enrichment in Math and ELA. 7th and 8th-grade students are encouraged to take advanced math classes offered and engineering, robotics, technology or other similar electives.

My schedule:

Mondays: Laveen School 8:30 am- 1:45 pm Rogers Ranch 2:00-3:30

Tuesdays- Rogers Ranch 8:30 am- 3:30 pm

Wednesdays- Laveen School 8:30 am- 1:45 pm Rogers Ranch 2:00-3:30

Thursdays-Rogers Ranch 8:30 am- 3:30 pm

Fridays- District office 8:30 am-11:30 am Rogers Ranch 12:00-3:30pm