Students identified and placed in the GATE program have the opportunity to take one or more Honors classes in various academic areas. The course content is taught at an advanced ideological level, and books and supplementary materials are selected to challenge gifted students.
In addition to Honors classes, students may take Advanced Placement courses in a wide variety of subjects, including English, history, government, calculus, economics, science, and foreign languages.
AP courses offer college-level curriculum on the high school campus. Upon successful completion of the national examinations in May of each year, students may earn college credit and/or advanced standing at many colleges.
In order to encourage and reinforce student participation in these rigorous academic courses, students earn an extra grade point for Honors and AP courses (a five-point grading system is used).
Teachers in the GATE program participate in continued professional development to assist them in creating curriculum that is challenging and interesting to students on a variety of levels.
Philosophy and Goals
The Board of Trustees of the Chaffey Joint Union High School District believes that all students deserve an education that challenges them to meet their fullest potential. To that end, the Board of Trustees has provided our gifted and talented students opportunities for learning that are commensurate with their particular abilities and talents. (CJUHSD Board Policy 2090.1 – December, 2006)
The primary goal for gifted education is to provide
a curriculum that recognizes and responds to the needs, interests, and abilities of gifted students, offers continuous progress and translates potential into performance. (California Association for the Gifted)
The Superintendent or designee shall identify as gifted and talented any student who enters from a district in which he/she was identified as a gifted and talented student.
If a student has not already been previously GATE-identified, he/she may qualify by any one of the
Show that he/she achieved a level 5 performance (Advanced) on his/her 7th grade state standardized test or
- A score in the 90th percentile on a national standardized test. Students who only receive such a score in a specific content area (i.e., math) will be GATE identified in that specific category.
- Show that he/she achieved a level 5 performance (Advanced) on his/her 8th – 11th grade state standardized test. Students will be placed into courses as space permits and may have to wait until the following semester.
- If a student has a middle school cumulative GPA of 3.5 or higher, he/she can take the identification test in the spring of his/her 8th grade year. Qualifying scores will remain the same. As a result of identification testing, a student may be identified as “Provisional”.
- A student who is initially identified as “Provisional” can be designated GATE if the student has the grade of C or better in current honors’ classes after the first semester.
All students will still need to attend an interview/information session prior to entering high school.
Written consent shall be secured from a student’s parent/guardian before he/she participates in the program.
Summer Reading List for Advanced Placement and Honors/GATE
Teachers in the Honors/AP program advocate year-round reading both for pleasure and for improvement of vocabulary, comprehension, and critical thinking skills. Voracious readers become top scholars. To this end, we urge students to read widely, both fiction and non-fiction. Many students choose to read all the selections on their Summer Reading lists.
Summer Before Grade Nine
Students are to read:
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (Required) and read at least one of the following:
- Things Fall Apart- Chinua Achebe
- How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent- Julia Alvarez
- Bless Me Ultima- Rudolpho Anaya
- Rain of Gold- Victor Villaseñor
- China Boy- Gus Lee
- Nectar in a Sieve-Kamala Markandaya
Summer Before Grade Ten
Students are to read:
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini and at least one of the following:
- A Hundred Years of Solitude- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Snow- Orhan Pamuk
- The Firebrand- Marion Zimmer Bradley
- The Once and Future King- T.H. White
- Wild Swans- Jung Chang
Summer Before Grade Eleven (AP English III)
Students are to read either Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin or Walden – Henry David Thoreau and read and at least one of the following works:Woman Warrior- Maxine Hong Kingston
- House Made of Dawn- N. Scott Momaday
- No No Boy- John Okada
- Beloved- Toni Morrison
- Days of Obligation: An Argument with my Mexican Father- Richard Rodriguez
Summer Before Grade Twelve (AP English IV)
Students are to read Hamlet-William Shakespeare and watch the film version (starring Mel Gibson) and read at least one of the following works:
- The Remains of the Day- Kazuo Ishiguro
- A Passage to India- E.M. Forster
- Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen
- Tess of the D’Urbervilles- Thomas Hardy
Students enrolled in A.P. U.S. History are strongly encouraged to read the first 6 chapters in the textbook The American Pageant by Thomas A. Bailey. The library will check out the textbook to A.P. U.S. History students for the summer. Students may also purchase the textbook on-line or sometimes the Chaffey Community College bookstore has used available copies. Any edition of the textbook is acceptable; there is very little change in the various editions. The advantage of purchasing a textbook is that students can highlight and take notes in their text.