Gifted and Talented Recommendation Letter

The purpose of gifted and talented recommendation letters is to assist students who easily excel in class, often at the primary school level, in being accepted into a special program that is designed to offer more challenging educational opportunities. Such programs may be offered in the middle school grades too.

Sample:

This sample gifted and talented recommendation letter is from a kindergarten teacher to a gifted program director at an elementary school on behalf of a student who exceled in the kindergarten curriculum. The teacher is requesting that the student be tested for admittance into the gifted program beginning in first grade.

Dear Dr. Levine:

I am writing this letter on behalf of Sally Little who is an active and inquisitive little girl in my kindergarten class. Her curiosity and eagerness to learn has made her a pleasure to teach this year. She is also polite and respectful to teachers and her peers, and is able to sit quietly and focus when a class activity requires her complete attention. Sally has shown a love and special aptitude for reading. She is able to read and recognize more than the recommended 100 high frequency words for kindergarteners including blended words. She has read all books in the kindergarten classroom, has also read the books I borrowed from the first grade class and has now started on the second grade books.

In addition to excelling in reading, Sally is able to write complete sentences forming all letters in the alphabet correctly. She is able to apply the rules of sentence structure properly and put several sentences together to form a coherent thought or story. Sally enjoys writing sentences and has also shown a talent for including illustrations to enhance her stories. Both the art teacher and music teacher have communicated that Sally shows promise in those areas, and the Spanish teacher has indicated that she has shown above average ability to grasp the language.

Sally has mastered all mathematical concepts that have been presented in the kindergarten class up to this point. She is able to sort objects based on one or more attributes, create both simple and complex patterns and identify two and three dimensional shapes. She is able to correctly form all numbers and recognizes, names and assigns a value of numbers all the way up to 1,000. Sally has demonstrated an understanding of basic probability concepts, fractions and graphs, and I expect her to continue to meet or exceed math concepts in future grades. She enjoys being challenged and tackles math problems with zeal and determination to find the solution.

Although Sally is ahead of most of her peers in kindergarten, she does not display the disruptive characteristics that are common among children who are bored in class. I highly recommend that Sally Little be tested for enrollment in the gifted and talented program next year. I believe she would meet the challenges with enthusiasm and thrive in the classroom.

Best Regards,

Mary Ann Johnson

Kindergarten Teacher

Happy Acres Elementary School