Challenging Advanced Learners to Go Further
At Shining Rock Classical Academy, we believe students thrive when they are appropriately challenged, encouraged to explore their interests, and given opportunities to take their learning beyond the traditional classroom. Our Academically or Intellectually Gifted (AIG) program provides advanced learners with specialized instruction and enrichment designed to deepen their thinking, encourage curiosity, and introduce new opportunities for discovery.
The Shining Rock Classical Academy AIG program serves identified gifted learners throughout our K–8 school. While formal identification commonly becomes a greater focus as students progress through the elementary grades, SRCA recognizes that advanced learning needs can emerge much earlier. Our program has provided AIG services to students as young as kindergarten and first grade, allowing us to respond to individual learning needs across all grade levels.
What Is AIG?
AIG stands for Academically or Intellectually Gifted. AIG students demonstrate advanced abilities, achievement, or potential that may require learning opportunities beyond those typically provided through grade-level instruction.
At Shining Rock, AIG is about more than giving students additional work. It is about providing greater depth, complexity, challenge, and opportunities for exploration.
Identified students in grades 3–8 participate in two dedicated 50-minute AIG sessions each week. Younger learners can also receive age-appropriate AIG support based on their individual needs. Through specialized activities, projects, and electives, students have opportunities to investigate subjects more deeply, solve challenging problems, collaborate with other advanced learners, and pursue new areas of interest.
Our goal is to meet gifted students where they are academically while continuing to challenge them to grow.
Supporting Gifted Learners From the Beginning
One of the distinguishing features of AIG at Shining Rock Classical Academy is our willingness to recognize and support advanced learning needs at an early age.
Young gifted learners can sometimes require a different level of challenge well before the traditional gifted-identification years. SRCA works to recognize those needs rather than requiring students to wait until later elementary school to receive additional opportunities.
This K–8 approach allows us to build a continuum of support as students develop, helping advanced learners remain engaged, challenged, curious, and excited about learning throughout their Shining Rock experience.
Project Lead The Way: Bringing STEM to Life
An important component of advanced and experiential learning at Shining Rock is our partnership with Project Lead The Way (PLTW), a nationally recognized organization providing hands-on STEM learning experiences for students and professional development and instructional resources for educators.
Shining Rock is the only Project Lead The Way school in Haywood County, giving our students access to distinctive opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Through PLTW training, resources, grants, and instructional modules, our teachers can create experiences that allow students to explore STEM concepts by actually putting them into practice.
That might mean working with robotics, drones, flight simulation, radio technology, or other hands-on projects that transform abstract concepts into experiences students can see, test, build, and understand.
Learning by Doing
Project Lead The Way fits naturally with Shining Rock’s broader commitment to hands-on, experiential learning.
We believe students develop a deeper understanding when they have opportunities to apply what they are learning. Instead of simply reading about engineering, students can design and build. Rather than only learning the science behind flight, they can experiment with a flight or drone simulator. Technology becomes something to investigate and create with, rather than simply something to use.
These experiences encourage students to ask questions, experiment, troubleshoot, collaborate, adapt, and try again. In the process, they are developing skills that reach well beyond a particular STEM lesson.
Problem-solving. Creativity. Communication. Persistence. Critical thinking.
These are valuable skills for advanced learners and important elements of the educational experience we want every Shining Rock student to develop.
Where Classical Education Meets Experiential Learning
At Shining Rock Classical Academy, a strong academic foundation and experiential learning are complementary rather than competing ideas.
Students need foundational knowledge. They also need opportunities to use that knowledge in meaningful ways.
Our AIG and Project Lead The Way experiences help create that connection. Students can take concepts introduced through traditional academic instruction and explore them through projects, experimentation, technology, and real-world problem-solving.
For gifted and advanced learners in particular, these opportunities provide additional depth and challenge while encouraging them to become active participants in their education.
Helping Advanced Learners Discover What’s Possible
Gifted students do not all learn in the same way, share the same interests, or need the same kinds of challenges. The Shining Rock Classical Academy AIG program is designed to recognize those differences and provide students with opportunities to stretch themselves intellectually.
From supporting advanced learners in the earliest elementary grades to providing dedicated AIG sessions, specialized electives, and hands-on STEM opportunities through Project Lead The Way, Shining Rock strives to create an environment where curiosity is encouraged and students are challenged to discover just how much they can do.
AIG Resources for Families
Families can learn more about AIG identification, testing, services, and grade-level programming through the Shining Rock Classical Academy AIG Parent Handbook.
Additional resources and newsletters are also available to help families better understand gifted education and discover opportunities for advanced learners.
Questions about AIG?
Contact Nancy Bertrand, AIG Specialist
nbertrand@shiningrock.org
