Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Is differentiated instruction a hollow promise?

I do think the open layout helps in that paras can easily circulate between multiple different classrooms. The school seems to spend money on these in-class paras rather than spending money on intervention teachers who pull kids with special needs with math/reading (the other end of the spectrum). So the paras can help with whatever it is the teacher needs rather than being on a rigid pull-out schedule.

Honestly I don't know exactly how DS's teacher makes it work or finds any extra time to work with him and grade the numerous individualized papers she has him do (including giving him his own individualized spelling tests!) but it's working out fairly well. Sometimes I ask him "Who helped you with this?" and he names someone that I don't know.

Blackcat, pardon me, but could we please stop calling kids who need intervention "the other end" of anything?

Giftedness is a special educational need that requires intervention. Many kids need specially planned interventions at various times during their education, and there are many kinds of intervention, but there is not a "top" or a "bottom" or a "better" or a "worse" here.

I don't think she said anything wrong. A big reason educators and policymakers are unwilling to acknowledge that there are children with high IQs is that this immediately raises the possibility that there are children with low IQs, a fact that they would like to ignore. On this forum we should be able to speak honestly and clearly but not disrespectfully about differences in intelligence.

Well...yes, there is.

People who are gifted at anything are generally better at learning it or doing what they're gifted at than most other people. This is the definition of giftedness. A major problem in education is that schools are more likely to claim that cognitive giftedness doesn't exist than any other kind of gift.

IMO, differentiation doesn't work because our education system has made a decision not to address the needs of gifted kids. NCLB is all about students who fall behind. There are exceptions, but IEPs are generally designed for the special ed. population or for students with disabilities. Etc.

Teachers can reasonably claim that they have too many students to be able to provide extra teaching on new topics to one or two gifted kids. Fair enough. But they could send these kids to another grade for subject acceleration or whole-grade accelerate them, but many schools flatly refuse to do this.

Many educators don't understand levels of giftedness or gifted learners, but all they have to do is read a book or visit a few websites to get all the answers they need.

Again, it's a decision they've made, whether they'll phrase it in those terms or not.

My own kid is at the "other end of the spectrum" in terms of his special need areas (like motor skills). He is 2e and gets pulled out of class for being "on the other side of the spectrum." It is what it is. There are far more negative ways of putting it. I'm talking about it like the bell curve, in terms of specific academic skills. Some kids are on the right side for skills like math and reading, other kids are on the left side. The other side. The kids who are in the bottom percentiles are the ones pulled out for interventions. The kids on the "right side" of the spectrum have special needs as well, but those aren't the ones being pulled out for interventions (although maybe they should be). That's why I clarified what I meant by putting in parentheses that I was referring to the kids with special needs on the other end of the spectrum. I'm sorry if I offended you but I don't really don't see why you are. My own kids have special needs so I'm really the last person you need to preach to.

Exactly. Administrators in the district claim that teachers differentiate and it's a value in the district. But teachers don't differentiate and claim it's impossible. Meanwhile the administrators make it extremely difficult or outright ban acceleration, saying it's not needed because there is differentiation in the classroom. They are deluding themselves. If a kid is lucky enough to have a gifted teacher who is able and willing, then there may be some degree of differentiation. But otherwise, tough luck.

OK, then, if we have to have a flat spectrum with two ends, today mine looks more like this:

Kids who need nothing extra in school ---- Kids who need the most extra support in school

IME a divisive approach where one complains about what some are getting, or tries to set the gifted and the disabled off as opposites, doesn't get the job done. Seeing the commonalities does.

If you're looking for the teachers with skills in differentiated instruction, the special ed staff is trained to have those skills; perhaps our tactic should be to persuade the school to use those skilled intervention teachers for all kids (including the gifted) when they are needed. Again, IME.

Bostonian: whoever said that all children who receive intervention services for reading or math necessarily have low intelligence? The 2Es are many, as are other children who have mixed profiles of abilities.

I think this is a good idea and is sort of happening with the paras in DS's school. A para comes in daily and helps with the reading stations, working with kids of all different abilities. They are not assigned to any particular kid. One of the schools in this district was very big into personalized learning. So each teacher had a class of about 40 kids, but also had 3 paras. The paras worked with small groups. So many parents loved this model because kids could work at their own pace. But the district did away with it and is forcing the school to become "traditional" because it cost just a few thousand dollars extra than what other schools in the district were spending.

Our special ed staff is mandated to help with gifted and if you talk to anyone in the school board office they talk a great talk. In our school however, gifted kids get zero time with the special ed teachers. My DS is 2e and has an IEP that has 2 pages of accommodations for his probable LD (and that is only with a PROBABLE label). We've pushed for something to be done on the confirmed gifted side and they say it is all covered by differentiation (which they then don't even attempt to do).

aquinas - for your comment much earlier - I don't think it matters what the province mandates at all. Our school doesn't follow what their own school board mandates, why would they listen to anyone even further up the chain