Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments enrichment for all

I am a regular ed. teacher completing the gifted endorsement this summer. We are completing a group project in one of our classes where we want ideas/resources to enhance the curriculum for all students. Our school is a magnet school school and does not offer gifted services. We want a way for teachers to be able to recognize creativity in the classrooms and expound upon this talent with daily lessons...any ideas?

Thanks for asking epainter! That's a brave question. I don't have time to go on and on (fortunately) but here's one and I'll let others chime in.

Give open-ended assignments. For example, if it's volcanoes, be sure that finishing the assignment isn't the ceiling. If they are researching or creating something then some kids will do more (and the kids who do less shouldn't be penalized). Example, my 4th grade son always wrote a 5 paragraph essay when the teacher said to write a five paragraph essay. When he was give a creative writing assignment in 5th grade with no rules, he wrote a book (literally).

Well...I guess I'm wondering why your school doesn't offer gifted services. Some kids are better at learning than others, just like some kids are better at sports than others. Schools seem to be okay with this idea when it involves sports, but not when it involves faster learners.

Does your school district allow mixed ages on varsity and JV teams? In PE class, do the faster runners have to slow down and wait for the other kids to catch up? Denying services to bright and gifted kids is a lot like making good runners wait near the finish line so that everyone will finish at the same time.

Val

Here are some recommendations from the Davidson Institute's Educator's Guild (a free service):

http://www.davidsongifted.org/edguild/Article/Educators_Guild_Helping_Gifted_Students_334.aspx

I don't know what grades you have in the magnet school, but I love the Core Knowledge Curriculum for integrated creative projects (see the lesson plans on their website for teachers). For American History, they had quilt-making and folk tales and folk music. Everything had extension studies and thematic study in literature, arts, music, etc -- with great projects.

Oh - and just very random thoughts re: your subject "enrichment for all." My idea of enrichment is something interesting and creative and fun that all students can benefit from, whereas gifted education is providing appropriate challenges to students who need it. Many times providing just enrichment to gifted kids, which to most people looks like fun, will create resentment from the kids who are not getting it. So I applaud giving "enrichment" to all. However, most gifted kids need more than enrichment. What they need will be challenges at their level/speed, which will not look like fun to the kids who do not need it and thus are not getting it - it will look like hard work. Also, please make sure that the gifted kids who are given more challenging work don't have to do the other work assigned to the rest of the class - it should not be punishment for them to get appropriate challenges. Just very quick random thoughts...

Agreed; piling on too much work can create a dislike of school.

I think it's important to remember that a lot of gifted kids can simply skip some things because they understand some concepts intuitively. Example, my four-year-old can spell easy and medium words (dog, like, happy, day etc.). They were testing her for a skip and noted a "gap" in not "being able to identify the middle sound in a word."

It's not that she can't "identify the middle sound." It's that she doesn't know this particular vocabulary. More importantly, she has an intuitive understanding of the order of the letters in a word and can lay them out on paper. She doesn't need to go through the first-middle-last sound drills because she figured out the underlying concepts for herself.

Similarly, kids who can add/subtract in their heads when they're very young can just skip the methods that are used to teach the concepts of these operations (e.g. Rule-in, Rule-out, basic manipulatives).

It's probably hard to understand that some kids are much further ahead than their ages would suggest, or that they can get ahead without drilling on standard techniques. So sometimes teachers can get hung up on making them proficient at a technique before they'll even check to see if the child is already way beyond the underlying concept.


I guess sometimes people forget that the goal is to learn the concepts and not the individual techniques. Gifted kids (like anyone, really) can get very frustrated if they're forced to learn something they already know before being allowed to move to something else that they already know.

Val

I think the open ended project style is what seems to work best for most gts. A possibility would be the following: let's say that you're studying bugs and you have ladybugs in the area. Have the kids catch a bug each and make a little home for them in glass jars with a cover with holes and let the kids put what they feel it needs to survive in the jars. Then have them draw a picture of the bug, write questions they have about the bugs and write observations about where they found the bug and how they made it's house. Then give them the following options and have them complete at least 2: write a story with a lady bug as the main character, write a poem about the lady bug, write a song about lady bugs, make a model of the lady bug. Then as a class compile the questions everyone has and research the answers. Or ask for volunteers to do the research and report the info back to the class.
This gives you an idea of what level they students are thinking at, as well as allowing you the openness to assess their work on a sliding scale. Using a rubric with different levels of proficiency as a guide to assessing the work also shows the students what areas they need to improve in and what areas they have down pat.

Here's a link to a great Blog that i read weekly...she is a gifted teacher and has some wonderful ideas...wish she taught in our state!
http://www.parentinggiftedkids.com/

Hi Val, thanks for your question. I teach in a magnet school and the district doesn't feel that we need the funding for gifted. The gifted department has been pushing for services to be offered for years. Students may go back to the zone school and receive the services but if they stay at the magnet school the gifted services are not offered. On a more positive note...the county offered to pay for this endorsement for anyone interested in taking the courses and 4 teachers from my school signed up. There would have been more but the books alone were over $400 and we have to cough that up out of pocket. Now that I have researched gifted I realize there is so much that I have no clue about. Reg. Ed. teachers are not taught how to differentiate the curriculum in a meaningful way for gifted and talented students so this is fascinating to me Any practical ideas are welcome.