critical information to help parents understand the importance of practic-
ing these behaviors for their children’s success in school, work, and life.
The mission of Project Bright IDEA 1 and 2 was to increase the
potential for the number of children from underrepresented populations
to be placed into gifted and higher-level programs and to close the gap
among all populations of students. All students showed significant gains
on state assessments across all subgroups of the populations, indicating
that the gap among subgroups was closed. North Carolina headcount data
will continue to be evaluated to determine how many children are placed
in higher-level or gifted programs over the next few years.
The preassessment and postassessment on the intelligent behaviors
were based on a five scale rubric: (1) readiness; (2) emergent; (3) progress-
ing; (4) early independent; and (5) independent.
Multicultural literature units were field tested during Project Bright
IDEA 1 and were revised for Bright IDEA 2 participants to teach and col-
lect data on the children’s progress toward becoming independent learn-
ers on selected behaviors that are taught in each of the units. The pre-
assessment and postassessment units are taught and children observed in
each of the designated research classrooms.
What Was the Impact on Children?In addition to integrating a think-
ing skills program into the North Carolina Standard Course of Study, we
fostered students’ abilities in developing five cognitive skills critical for
success in achievement and testing: (1) describing; (2) finding similarities
and differences; (3) sequencing; (4) classifying; and (5) forming anal-
ogies. This program has been excellent for helping students develop
vocabulary. Outcomes for the children included: improved vocabulary
development; clarified thinking processes integral to content learning;
improved observation and description skills; improved interaction with
peers; demonstrated growth on literacy, mathematics, and writing assess-
ments; and improved conceptualization of mathematics, social studies,
and science.
What Was the Impact on Teachers? Outcomes for teachers included
the following: integrated the HOM/GIBs throughout the North Carolina
Habits of Mind in North Carolina 327