I'd like to know what others are doing to foster speaking skills, especially among students in grades K-8.
My DS's school (which is not specifically for gifted children) seems to take this pretty seriously. I'll use US grade terminology although we're in Scotland.
K: "show and tell" - bring an interesting object (but toys were not allowed) and talk about it.
1: "Presentation". Each child chooses (with negotiation) a topic of interest relating to the term's theme. They research the topic and plan a 3 minute talk that will be interesting to their classmates. They are encouraged to use a few visual aids, e.g. pictures (and my son made a paper model of the kind of aircraft he was talking about) and can use notes but must not read out a scripted talk. At the end they pose and answer questions and discuss what was good and what could be improved about the presentation.
2+: we haven't got there, so I'm not sure what happens, but one thing I know is that all the children do English Speaking Board exams:
http://www.esbuk.org/content/Schools/Years+1+to+6.aspxThinking specifically about gifted issues, DS has two main problems: that he uses vocabulary that is not understood by the other children, and that many of the things he's interested in are not of interest to his age-peers. He's learning fast how to deal with the first, with some gentle encouragement from his teacher. (This is hard to handle tactfully, though, and it relates to recent discussions here about how to discuss their giftedness with children. I noticed my DS refer to the other children in his class as "the children" the other day as though he were not one of them!) The second is more intractable. He simply doesn't get the chance at school to talk about his main interests, and it's not clear how he could. We just try to make sure he has the chance to talk with much older children and adults, not just with us, whenever possible.
