Providing For Gifted Learners And Their Teachers: Fill & Download for Free

In the ‘80s and ‘90’s, Dr. Sally Reis, U. Connecticut, conducted a long-term study of identified gifted students who were high achievers in elementary school but then failed to achieve well in high school or college.These students had been identified as ‘gifted’ by scoring at or above the 98th percentile on a full-scale psychologist-administered intelligence test like the Stanford-Binet or the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R). Although that is not the way I personally define intelligence, I’ll use the word ‘gifted’ as defined that way within this post.I taught gifted students in grades K-8 for a number of years, both in classes where everyone met that definition and in mixed classes where my students had a wide range of skills and abilities. I was also K-12 program administrator and consultant to K-12 gifted education teachers and programs in several dozen school districts for over two decades. I trained hundreds of teachers to differentiate instruction in order to address the needs of the wide range of skills, abilities, motivation, English language fluency, and background knowledge of their students.Frequently, gifted children seemed to learn effortlessly; in fact, they had often already mastered ‘new’ content even before the teacher introduced it. If not, they often mastered it either when it was foreshadowed or first introduced. Sometimes they learned it by reading widely in books well beyond the norm for their grade level. They learn from noticing older siblings’ homework assignments. They often watch science and history programs on television. They listen in on adult conversations and discussions. They explore the Internet. They think and reflect. They ask adults questions about topics that pique their curiosity.While other children might need 7 to 40 exposures to a new concept to master it, a gifted learner might require just one, or perhaps 2 or 3. (And imagine having to sit through class while what one already knows is retaught and reviewed 40 more times.) If you solve 20 math problems accurately, why do 20 more in class and as homework every day for weeks? If you get 100% on the practice spelling test, why have to take the final spelling test? Why review over and over again what you already understand well? Many gifted learners just zone out. When work isn’t interesting or challenging, how many of us are motivated to put forth our best effort and enthusiastic attitude on a continual basis?Many students still get A’s on tests without having studied and/or without having done daily homework assignments. Some are able to earn A’s on book reports by just sampling a book they haven’t read cover-to-cover. Many of them procrastinate on assignments, doing the display and report for their science project at the last minute or turning in their first draft of an essay as their final product, and still get A’s.Because they excel on tests, teachers will sometimes avoid calling on gifted learners in class in order to provide practice to students who need it more. Since a gifted learner so often raises his hand to respond, a teacher may not notice when his hand is down, although it might signify that he doesn’t understand and doesn’t want anyone to know, lest they realize he isn’t so smart after all. Typically articulate and glib, they are often able to cover well enough, when asked about something they don’t know, to appear that they do.They often come to believe that being gifted means they should know without trying… and many are able to do so throughout elementary school. Some are able to continue this delusion even longer, through middle school or high school.The problem is, that unlike their non-gifted classmates, they have never learned to deal with difficulty or failure and when they encounter it, in high school or college where there are many others as smart as or even smarter than they are, they have no idea how to struggle with challenging tasks or concepts. When they can’t easily get past initial frustration or failure, they give up. They haven’t learned how to put forth strenuous effort, how to study using distributed practice, how to comprehend too-difficult text, how to budget time to accomplish a large task in incremental steps, or how to complete several complex simultaneous homework assignments, or how to juggle multiple challenging tasks with overlapping deadlines.After 15 years of study, Dr. Reis concluded that the number one indicator for eventual academic failure of a formerly high-achieving gifted student was “excellence without effort” in elementary school.One of the most valuable aspects of homogeneous classes or groupings for gifted students is that they can be challenged with curriculum that is not just more difficult, but differentiated in content, process, and/or product to address their academic needs through higher-level questions, critical thinking, creative problem solving, inquiry learning, independent and group projects, collaboration with peers, etc.Even in a heterogeneous class, where students have diverse abilities and skills, the curriculum can be compacted. Gifted students typically already know (or can master on first exposure) 40–50% of the grade level curriculum. If the parts they already know (verified through pretesting or past performance) are eliminated or ‘compacted’, they can spend the time saved on interesting independent projects or delving into subtopics or ‘extensions’ that intrigue them and that are related to the class unit of study but for which there is no time within the basic curriculum that all grade-level students must learn. Since they are learning what interests them, students who do so are self-motivated. By sharing the most fascinating things they thus learn, not only these students but their classmates all benefit. A number of studies have demonstrated that gifted students whose curriculum has been compacted to eliminate 40–50% still score as well on unit tests and achievement tests as do their gifted peers who were exposed to 100% of the curriculum.Without such differentiated instruction, if you have a son or daughter who is able to excel without effort in their school, find an extracurricular activity that interests but truly challenges them. It might be for example, learning a musical instrument, a foreign language, or a university-level correspondence course. Whatever it is, it must interest the child but require significant sustained effort on his or her part. As the parent, you should also be modeling this. Take on learning something new that you find extremely challenging and share your frustrations, feelings, and successes as you learn.Lukasic, M., Gorski, V., Lea, M., & Culross, R. (1992). Underachievement among gifted/talented students: What we really know. Houston, TX: University of Houston-Clear Lake.Reis, S. M., Hebert, T., Diaz, E., Maxfield, L., & Ratley, M. (1995). Case studies of talented students who achieve and underachieve in an urban high school (95120). Storrs: University of Connecticut, The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented.Shaw, M. C., & McCuen, J. T. (1960). The onset of academic underachievement in bright children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 51(3), 103-108.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. If you mean, do teachers doubt the abilities of gifted students based on poor grades or not performing up to their potential ability, then yes. There are certainly teachers (and parents too) who are unconvinced that being gifted is a real identification and even a specific type of special need.Also, sometimes teachers will not make accommodations for gifted students if they do not behave or perform as the teacher thinks they should.As a GIS, I have had teachers voice concerns to me about gifted students I serve because they do not follow directions or follow through on assignments. It is important to recognize that being identified as gifted does not mean students will be top performers on tests or in class (as far as grades are concerned).What it does mean is that students with this identification need to be serviced by those who understand the social, emotional, and academic needs of gifted learners and that general education teachers should be open to accommodating those needs. Yes, it is extra work. Yes, it requires a level of empathy for students who may not be easy to teach. However, gifted learners need teachers to respect their needs just as students with disabilites need teachers to respect theirs.

During the years that I served as administrator of programs for gifted learners, I had misunderstandings with two confused people.The first was my sister’s boyfriend. Apparently she had told him I was in charge of the Gifted Program, but he misheard her. Six of us were traveling to Mexico for Christmas break and he asked how I was able to get away. I said I had the time off and he asked, “But isn’t this your busy season?”“What do you mean?” I asked.He said, “I would think the time just before Christmas and Hanukkah would be the busiest season for a gift program.”In the second case I had been contracted two days a week by a California school district as consultant for their Gifted and Talented Education program, better known by its acronym: the GATE program. After I’d been there as GATE Coordinator for a couple of months an angry woman approached me.“I’m sure you’re a nice person,” she said, “but I am putting you on notice that I am completely against the very idea of the school board funding this program or hiring anyone for your position and I am going to work hard to see that it’s eliminated as soon as possible. I understand you are even asking teachers to refer students to this program who they suspect might qualify.”Many people are against the idea of providing any special services for students who already seem to have an advantage, so this did not catch me totally by surprise. “Don’t you think that all students are entitled to an education commensurate with their educational needs?” I asked her.“Sure,” she replied, “but I don’t consider this an educational need.”“Their ability to learn, as measured by a standardized IQ test, places them more standard deviations from average than students in Special Day Classes who have small class size and specially trained teachers,” I said. “Without opportunities for them to be challenged and to work with gifted peers, many of them will drop out of high school as soon as they are allowed to at age 16 and although there are many exceptions, others never continue their education nor fulfill their potential. These are students who may some day be able to find solutions for big problems that affect all of us: poverty, disease, war, climate change, and so forth, so keeping them challenged and encouraging them to use their abilities to solve real-world problems benefits all of us.”“Wait a minute,” she said. “What program are you talking about?”“The GATE Program,” I replied. “Gifted and Talented Education.”“Omigod, “she exclaimed. “I owe you an apology. I thought you were the Gay Coordinator and were asking teachers to refer kids that they suspected might be gay.”