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Elementary Horizons Program

Wentzville's Elementary Horizons program serves students in grades 2-5. Students who qualify for our Elementary Horizons program begin receiving services in the fall of their 2nd-grade year.  Students who qualify after or during 2nd-grade are welcome to begin the program at semester and/or natural breaks deemed appropriate by the gifted teacher.

The elementary Horizons program is a “pull-out” program in which students receive services for one full day per week at the Elementary Gifted Center. Our Gifted Center is currently located at Boone Trail Elementary. Students are bused to and from their Home Schools on their designated day to spend the day in both grade-level and mixed-grade level groups. Students also get the opportunity to meet Horizons students from various buildings around the district. Buildings are paired to best support the teacher-to-student ratio to keep classes as small as possible. 

Elementary Gifted education focuses on learning how to learn. The Horizons Elementary Center teaches a great many things, but it is not what we are teaching but how we are teaching that differentiates our gifted program from the regular classroom. In Horizons, we focus on processing skills rather than content, which means how a student is learning to think about a topic is more important than the topic itself. Metacognition, or thinking about thinking, is a key element of our program. 

Horizons curriculum focuses on the Missouri Gifted Learning Outcomes (MoGlos), which focus on 6 domains. Complex reasoning, creative thinking, affective processing, global mindedness, communicating effectively, and executive functioning.  Students will discover new ideas or solutions to situations by using their own thinking processes along with cognitive and affective learning experiences. Students will discover the joy of exploration and discovery that will make them lifelong learners. 

  • Complex Reasoning involves the use of inductive and deductive reasoning to solve logic puzzles, determine analogies, and configure Venn Perplexors, to name a few. 
  • Creative Thinking is where we utilize FFOE, which stands for fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration. Fluency means coming up with many ideas quickly, flexibility is the combining of ideas from different categories, originality is devising unique ideas, and elaboration is the addition of details. 
  • Affective Processing is addressed within Horizons through various means, with the common goal of self-reflection regarding one’s giftedness, personal needs, and awareness of, as well as, the response to the needs of others.

Global Mindedness, Communicating Effectively, and Executive Functioning are all interwoven into the three main domains. All three domains are addressed at the appropriate developmental level for the age group involved and progress throughout the years spent in the program.