All children possess gifts and talents. The Framingham Public Schools defines giftedness as students with gifts and talents perform—or have the capability to perform—at higher levels compared to others of the same age, experience, and environment in one or more domains who may also require modification(s) to their educational experience(s) to learn and realize their potential (National Association of Gifted Children). 

According to the National Association of Gifted Children, gifted and talented children come from all cultural, racial, economic, and linguistic backgrounds. Gifted children also require support in accessing their gifts and talents through multiple learning opportunities through accommodations and modifications. Within the context of Framingham Public Schools, the goal of the Sage program is to utilize intervention services when appropriate to support students in optimizing opportunities to access their school experience academically, behaviorally, and socio-emotional.

Since the goal is for every student to maximize their learning potential, it becomes necessary for children who possess needs associated with giftedness to receive adjustments in the teaching and learning environment.  The responsibility for adapting to these student needs may be met in the classroom or through a small group instruction outside of the classroom or both, depending upon individual needs. Therefore, the services of the Sage Department are three-fold based on student needs: pull-out services, intervention, remediation, and collaborative enrichment through collaboration between classroom and Sage teachers as determined by the multi-tiered support system (MTSS) team at each school.

The Sage pull-out services will provide support for creating project-based learning opportunities with a culminating project to allow students time to present their work to the larger school community. Projects that are completed will be based on Massachusetts frameworks and aligned with the student’s classroom content to support them in making classroom connections while fostering their academic discourse and growth on the student-selected topic. 

Students identified as needing intervention and remediation will receive targeted, goal-driven, small-group instruction through the analysis of specific data by Sage teachers and MTSS teams. Interventions run on an established 6-8 week cycle, are goal-driven and involve ongoing progress monitoring and refinement.

It is important that all students have access to a highly engaging grade-level, standards-aligned curriculum throughout the day that meets the needs of the individual learner. This often requires adapting and modifying the curriculum to include highly cognitively demanding tasks, allowing for student autonomy and students to use their creativity and innovative thinking. Sage teachers will support classroom teachers to help provide standards-aligned depth and complexity to learning tasks that push the thinking of all students, especially Sage students.