Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research ideas for research project?

Great link to a great program. Both public and private schools should have these types of after school programs.

Clay, I'm currently working on an online early college curriculum. You mentioned some really good ideas (projects, independent study, small groups, etc.), which I've incorporated into the curriculum. There seems to be a greater demand for middle and high school programs, but not so much for elementary level programs.

Here is a simple project. Administer IQ tests to a group of children upon entry to school (or maybe one year later). Correlate those IQ scores to academic achievement each following year. If you find that the IQ of 5-year-olds predicts many future outcomes, that will be a badly needed reminder that schools CANNOT make everyone good students.

You'd need to adjust for significant confounding factors, though. The heritability of IQ is pretty low for 5yos, so much of what you'd be testing for is socioeconomic status.

A good school environment can do quite a bit to overcome SES - Head Start gives kids a pretty good IQ boost (which fades over time, although it's not clear if that's a heredity issue or a decreasing quality of school environment issue).

Clay, I'm not sure how it works but here's one of those virtual public schools. Here's the link to the interesting part- they host weekly webcam meetings between the students on Fridays. Looks like they have some version of after school clubs as well.
http://iqacademytx.com/community

Jojo, The current hot definition for dyslexia is "Phonological awareness deficit". This is not correct. I have been teaching dyslexic students 3 languages for more than 5 years.They have no problem reading in Malay and Romanised Mandarin. They, however, have a problem learning to read in English.The question is, if dyslexics have a phonological awareness deficit they should not be able to read in the other 2 languages as fluently as they do.
I have 6 research reports in my blog supporting my findings. Dyslexic students don't have a problem reading in Italian , Finnish and many other languages.They have a problem reading in English as English is an orthographically inconsistent language.

Now, your mission, Jojo, if you decide to accept it, is to do research on this. Look for schools which teach more than one language and determine those who are dyslexic and see how they fare in the other language.

If you need an assistant to help you in this research let me know.
Regards,
Luqman Michel

Ooooo! That sounds fascinating Luqman. However... I've decided on that ol' chestnut of anxiety in young gifted girls. I've put a proposal in for funding to run a small pilot program with 15 young worry warts - a combination of therapeutic art based around a children's novel called "The Worry Tree", some music therapy and some psych interventions in a supportive circle of trust to give the girls some strategies to manage their worries. If the pilot is successful, I'll then develop the program further for schools. I should find out about the funding in 3 weeks. Fingers crossed!

jojo

Luqman-Do you mind sending a link to your blog? I am interested in reading the reports re: dyslexia & languages. One of my daughters is struggling with something to do with language processing but no one has been able to pin point it so far.

The link is :http://www.parentingdyslexia.com

Please read it from the first article onwards with an open mind.
Write to me if you have any queries.
Regards.

Wish you good luck on your project Jojo.
Luqman Michel