Gifted Resource Council
Gifted Resource Council
About GRC - Board of Directors, Sponsors, Become a Member, mindwonders GRC Programs - Learning Labs, Summer Academies, Academic Challenge Cup GRC Resources - Articles, Kids Links, For Instructors Only!, Family Resources GRC Home
GRC Expands Opportunities For Middle School Students

Over the past several years GRC has been quietly expanding the opportunities available for gifted middle school students. These additional opportunities for seventh and eighth graders come in response to increasing requests to serve older students by parents and students themselves.

Ancient Academy Open to 7th, 8th Graders
Gifted Resource Council has expanded its Ancient Academy to include seventh and eighth graders for the first time this summer. Middle school students who, as younger history buffs, have enjoyed the richness of cultures like ancient Egypt and Greece will have an opportunity this July to investigate the feudal system from peasantry to royalty and learn how Marco Polo introduced the East to the West.

As is true with all the Ancient Academies, students studying the Middle Ages will divide tasks, research different areas, share what they learn with one another, construct artifacts and hold a culminating ceremony. Teamwork, exploratory learning and total immersion will characterize their learning adventure.

ECO Academy — Three Years of Success
Three years ago GRC piloted ECO Academy to give middle school students an opportunity to explore the relationship between ecological responsibility and economic entrepreneurship. The pilot project was so successful that ECO Academy is becoming one of the most popular Summer Academies.

Students actually form a "company," make a product and a profit, while striving to be ecologically friendly. Visiting experts from the sciences and business enrich their discussions and bring a touch of real world authenticity to the mix.

Space Academy — A Perennial Favorite
For years middle school students have been well served by GRC’s Advanced Space Academy. This perennial favorite allows students to delve deeper into the study of space while making and launching their own model rockets! Students in the final session of Advanced Space Academy travel to Kansas City to spend an exciting day in Mission Control at NASA’s regional Challenger Center.

ACC and Learning Labs
For eighteen years GRC has served gifted sixth, seventh and eighth graders with a rich variety of Saturday Learning Labs during the school year.

For example, middle school girls worked with Washington University engineering faculty in their campus labs last fall. The curriculum of this introduction to engineering course ranged from cardiovascular tissues to earthquake simulation and satellite design. The course was so popular that GRC opened a second section serving middle school boys as well as girls!

Perennially popular Learning Lab classes are offered for middle school students in topics as diverse as robotics, chess and Shakespeare.

Seventh and eight graders have also participated in Academic Challenge Cup held on the campuses of Washington and Fontbonne universities each spring. Working in teams of five, gifted middle schoolers compete in math and language games they have often spent months preparing for.

As demand grew, GRC expanded ACC from four days to five this year, thereby giving more middle school students opportunities to enjoy the challenge.

Opportunities for Growth
Summer is no time for adolescents to just hang out at home.

Summer should be an opportunity to participate in exciting enrichment programs which challenge a child to problem-solve while engaging in a wonderful variety of high-interest, hands-on experiences with other gifted peers.

Summer is the perfect time for a gifted child to participate in one or more of Gifted Resource Council’s Summer Academies.

Both the enriched curriculum and the involvement with gifted peers in a GRC class are important developmental opportunities for gifted children.

Many students do not have opportunities to work with gifted peers or participate in enriched curricula at their regular schools, and for them the unique opportunities GRC provides are even more valuable.

Because of the anti-intellectual bias of middle and high school, many gifted children tend to pull back and hide their gifts. In fact, reacting to negative peer pressure is one of the reasons many gifted children seriously underachieve.

Working with other gifted students at a Summer Academy— where no one has to hide his or her intelligence, just subordinate it to the efforts of a class functioning as a learning team-is a wonderful way to rekindle a child’s flagging desire to learn and excel.

For all these reasons as well as the many requests from parents and students, GRC has steadily expanded its opportunities for middle school students.

"We’ve never had more to offer older students, and we are very excited because we expect that more seventh and eighth graders will take advantage of these special opportunities to grow — intellectually and socially — while having fun," said Sue Flesch, GRC’s Executive Director.
For more information regarding Gifted Resource Council, please call the GRC office at 314-962-5920.