Implement research-based curriculum units. There are national and state gifted advocacy associations as well as partners available through university networks. You need to network with other people, who can converse with and support you so that you won't feel isolated in your attempts at meeting gifted students' needs in the classroom or at the school level. Take classes, get certified or licensed in gifted education, attend conferences, and become a life-long learner seeking out others who have a vested interest in gifted learners. Learn about this special diverse population of learners. Gifted students need to spend time with other gifted students. These supplemental programs are imperative to the health and well-being each learner. This can be achieved in a variety of ways, through ability grouping during school or supplemental programs, such as talent search programs like Johns Hopkins University's Center for Talented Youth, or Saturday or summer enrichment programs. Gifted students need intellectual peers to develop optimally. Find other gifted students and create opportunities for them to work together. Everyone thinks critically about something, and he or she can be creative as long as the work is built upon a solid content foundation. These are fine as long as they are linked to high-level content. Many teachers think that serving the gifted means providing them with thinking skills or creative activities in isolation. Ensure that task demands and assessments are content rich. Often this can mean linking the assignment to the student's area of interest or giving him authentic problems. You could collaborate with the technology specialist, explore related arts, or work with other teachers to find appropriate extensions. This may mean a different lesson plan or finding additional resources related to an area of study. You can acquire this information through formal and informal assessments that will help you provide extension, enrichment, acceleration, and complexity in that student's specific area of strength. Figure out in what area(s) students are gifted. Just because a student is highly precocious in math does not mean that she will be just as high in science. For example, even though a student is a gifted reader (able to read adult novels), he might not be a good writer - reading and writing are different skills sets. Expect a gifted child to be gifted in every subject area.Įmerging research and new definitions of gifted speak to gifted students having an area or domain of high ability that generally is not across all areas. Sending them unsupervised to the computer lab, library, or back of the room to work independently may not produce the desired result. While independent research projects based on student interest may provide depth in an area, teachers assume that a gifted student is self-regulated and can work independently on a project without any guidance, oversight, or accountability. Isolate them to work independently without oversight. You want them to produce quality, not quantity. If the child is intuitive, he or she will actually slow down and never finish early any more because that means getting more work. By giving gifted students more of the same type of work, you are penalizing them for being bright. You are sending the implicit message, "Hey, you're smart, here are another 20 math problems," while everyone else is still working on the original set of 10. Give them more work because they finish early. Gifted students are developmentally asynchronous, meaning that their cognitive and emotional development are out of sync. It's not because he or she is looking for attention, but because this student may be bored. Frequently, if there is a mismatch between classroom instruction and a gifted student's intellectual needs, that child may "act out" or misbehave. Just because a student is smart does not mean that he or she is well behaved. Expect the gifted student to be well behaved. When an appropriately differentiated education is not provided, gifted learners do not thrive in school, their potential is diminished, and they may even suffer from cognitive and affective harm. Using gifted students as tutors or teacher assistants for other students in the classroom is inappropriate and unethical, and it does not provide for their social-emotional or academic needs. Use these students, whether formally identified as gifted or not, as teacher assistants. Following are suggestions for how to best serve these students - and what not to do.
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