Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion G & T presentation ideas

I think one of the most difficult issues I've encountered in advocacy is the unwillingness to accelerate/give more appropriate work at the kid's readiness level based on social reasons. "We are concerned about his social development, and if we push him, he will be negatively impacted." I would give them links to free Nation Deceived download, which has tons of studies showing no negative social impact in acceleration. http://www.accelerationinstitute.org/nation_deceived/

Another big issue is that teachers will sometimes think that a kid cannot be ready for higher level stuff if they can't _____ (write well enough, e.g.). We were told that our kiddo couldn't move up another year in math because he couldn't keep up with the handwriting. But then we transferred him to a school where he was given that higher level math, and the experienced teacher said it wasn't a problem if he couldn't write all the answers, he could show that he understood it in other ways (verbally, e.g.), and eventually his handwriting would catch up.

In my opinion, many GT kids will rise or sink to the social level they are placed in. After my kiddo skipped a grade, we heard more than once when talking about his handwriting issues "Oh, I forgot he skipped a grade."

So many things, but I think the best thing that we encountered was flexibility and willingness to try different things for these kids who are outside the norm.

I haven't done the math to make this consideration completely accurate, but it would be nice to explain to people that there is as much variation in ability among those in the top 3% as there is in the next 47%. (Adjust the numbers for accuracy).

Ah, yes. Forgot about levels of GT. Thanks DAD22. Very important! Not all GT kids are the same.

Good point, DAD22, I forgot to mention that the tails are even more extreme. I didn't even realize it for my son until I saw a graphic with him on that teeny, tiny far end of right.

happyreader,

Would you please let us know what you decide to include? I'd like to see it and it might be useful for some in advocating. Good luck with it. I can't imagine having only 15 minutes for this.

I've seen several people say that teachers think that because kids weren't eager to do "more of the same work" when they were finished that it meant they were getting enough education. Explain the concept of cirriculum compacting, that if a kid can do several of the hardest examples if a problem that you should offer them something with a different concept rather than more of the same. That's not counting review. If it's been awhile since they've seen something you can offer them a few pages for review. But try to change it up a little with some new content. This is where you can move laterrally by giving them trivia factoid content that the class doesn't cover if you don't want them getting ahead of the class.

If this were my presentation, I'd start it out with an object lesson, by making them very, very uncomfortable. Because a gifted individual is just as different from a normal one as the normal one is to one with mental disabilities, I'd begin my presentation by lecturing to them as if they were all disabled. Once they've all begun to get frustrated and tuned out, I'd snap their attention back (dropping something heavy is pretty effective) and then let them know that the last five minutes of their lives is like what an unchallenged gifted child experiences for every moment of their school day.

Open discussion for the next several minutes, looking for responses from the audience as to how they felt and how they wanted to react which are commonly observed in gifted kids.