How can teachers challenge gifted students

We hope you will find these tips helpful. Tip 1: Familiarize Yourself with the Characteristics of Intellectually Gifted Students Not all gifted students in your classroom will be identified and even those who are may not always appear to be gifted. Students who are intellectually gifted demonstrate many characteristics, including: a precocious ability to think abstractly, an extreme need for constant mental stimulation; an ability to learn and process complex information very rapidly; and a need to explore subjects in depth.

Students who demonstrate these characteristics learn differently. Thus, they have unique academic needs. Imagine what your behavior and presentation would be like if, as a high school junior, you were told by the school district that you had to go back to third grade.

Or, from a more historical perspective, what if you were Mozart and you were told you had to take beginning music classes because of your age. This is often the experience of the gifted child. Some choose to be successful given the constructs of public school and others choose to rebel.

Either way, a few simple changes to their academic experience can dramatically improve the quality of their lives — and, mostly likely, yours! Research consistently shows that curriculum based on development and ability is far more effective than curriculum based on age. And, research indicates that giftedness occurs along a continuum. Just as athletes are good at athletics, gifted students are good at thinking. Tip 3: Conduct Informal Assessments Meeting the needs of gifted students does not need to be an all consuming task.

One of the easiest ways to better understand how to provide challenging material is to conduct informal whole class assessments on a regular basis.

For example, before beginning any unit, administer the end of the unit test. Rather, these students should be given parallel opportunities that are challenging. Consider offering these students the option to complete an independent project on the topic or to substitute another experience that would meet the objectives of the assignment, i.

With areas of the curriculum that are sequential, such as mathematics and spelling, how about giving the end of the year test during the first week of school. If you have students who can demonstrate competency at 80 percent or higher, you will save them an entire year of frustration and boredom if you can determine exactly what their ability level is and then offer them curriculum that allows them to move forward.

Formal assessments can be extremely helpful, however, they are expensive and there is generally a back log of students waiting to be tested. Conducting informal assessments is a useful and inexpensive tool that will offer a lot of information.

When it comes to teaching gifted children, take a few moments to review the work of Jean Piaget and Benjamin Bloom. Jean Piaget offers a helpful description of developmental stages as they relate to learning. Essentially all assignments should offer the student the opportunity to utilize higher level thinking skills like analysis, synthesis and evaluation, as defined by Bloom.

Search the Internet to learn more about these two important theorists. A couple of websites that may be of interest include:. Tip 5: Involve Parents as Resource Locators Parents of gifted children are often active advocates for their children. If you are not prepared for this, it can be a bit unnerving. The good news is that, at least in my experience, what they want most is to be heard and to encounter someone who is willing to think differently.

For example, if they want their child to have more challenging experiences in math, enlist their help in finding better curriculum options.

An informal assessment can help them determine the best place to start and then encourage them to explore other options that could be adapted to the classroom.

Flexibility and a willingness to think differently can create win-win situations. The Internet also provides ways for students to collaborate with peers from other states or countries who share the same interests. Apart from offering a significant enhancement to their academic and creative lives, technology also helps advanced learners feel more connected with others, less alone and isolated.

Let Kids Work Together For advanced learners, working with peers is critical. Social and emotional difficulties diminish when they have opportunities to learn with intellectual peers.

Accommodate Pace Accelerated learning should always be part of anything you do for an advanced child. Acceleration includes a broad spectrum of options—from assigning more difficult texts or research questions for a report to forming and coordinating a cluster group of high-ability students with another teacher.

Advanced learners often acquire new concepts and knowledge quickly. In fact, some children learn very quickly, while the rest of the class requires more time to synthesize new information. Strategies such as compacting, independent study, and even creative thinking activities enable above-grade students to learn at an appropriate pace for them. Determine Prior Knowledge Find out what advanced students have mastered. Nothing's worse than twiddling thumbs over lessons already learned.

Advanced students come into our rooms with abilities, experiences, and skills—much of which they either hide or lay aside. Give them credit for the knowledge and skills they possess, and help them create alternative goals. Avoid drill-and-practice assignments that can cause boredom and potential discipline problems. Keep them engaged with a process that challenges their thinking and includes their interests. Try to assess their knowledge level prior to a new unit by a variety of means, from producing a K-W-L chart to engaging in informal discussion.

Encourage Goal Setting Give advanced students opportunities to set their own personal learning goals. What are we going to do today? Now what? All students need experience in setting goals for themselves. Research demonstrates that setting goals has a powerful effect on student confidence and achievement. Advanced learners who come to school overflowing with ideas and energy need to develop the skill to break long-term goals down into smaller, short-term goals that are within their reach.

When students set smaller goals that lead to a larger achievement they care about, two things happen: They can focus their energy and ability, which would otherwise become diffused, and they can measure their progress in a tangible way.

Perfectionism, a common affliction of high-ability students, becomes more difficult to address in students who lack experience at goal setting. Teach Creatively Creativity is not about paintbrushes and poems. These students tend to be out-of-the-box learners, so they occasionally need alternative ways to process new concepts and information.

Creativity is not about paintbrushes and poems; it is a way of thinking and an attitude. Consider the following general principles. Ok Independent Learning Projects Whenever possible, give advanced students independent projects that permit them to inquire about a topic more deeply.

If a project such as this requires more planning and supervision than you can manage, scale it down. The student could interview his parents and grandparents, design a map of their travels, or write a story about their journey from Bolivia and what happened along the way.

Or, advanced learners in a geometry class could apply their knowledge of geometric shapes and measurement skills to research kite designs and materials, then build tetrahedron kites. Independent learning only works when students have opportunities to practice and develop the skills they need. Independent learning options often include some of the following skills. Follow their Interests Give your advanced students a chance to explore their interests.

Follow their curiosity. Terrell Bell, former U. The first one is motivation, the second is motivation, and the third is motivation. With compacting, students get to "throw away" the part of the curriculum that they already know, while receiving full credit for those competencies.

This frees up students to work on more challenging content. Let's say a teacher is teaching two-digit multiplication. He might do some direct instruction for 10 minutes, then offer students the end-of-chapter test, saying, "If you get 90 percent or higher, you won't have to do the homework or practice work. You'll have different work to do. Susan Flores, a 2nd grade teacher in Paradise Valley, meets a range of student abilities by using the standard as her baseline.

I have several piles of activities there that take a concept up or down. For example, when the class is working on the distributive property in math, those "piles" might include differentiated worksheets, word problems, and task cards. Depending on how students grasp the concept, Flores can either reteach, offer practice, or enrich. Flores also uses "choice boards. They jump in where they want to jump in," she notes.

All students in Flores's class can choose whether they want to take their learning to the next level. Janice Mak, a gifted cluster teacher and 7th and 8th grade STEM teacher in Paradise Valley, gives students a menu of options in her computer science class. After stu-dents learn the basics of programming—perhaps through an online course from Stanford University or work with Google CS First clubs—they work in teams to create a robot.

Students choose the level of complexity, from designing dogs that bark to building miniature disco rooms in which a record plays and lights flash. Students can also tailor a project to their interests. In a module on architecture, some students designed a playground for Egyptian students using Legos, Build with Chrome, or Minecraft. One student opted instead to recreate the White House using Minecraft. The Ignite presentation format offers another way for Mak to differentiate work on the basis of student interest.

The presenter has exactly 5 minutes and 20 slides, which auto-advance every 15 seconds, to discuss a topic of interest aligned to the unit. This activity allows students to share their passion with their peers, be it nanotechnology and its role in medicine, the physics of roller coasters, or the latest advances in virtual reality. According to education expert Jenny Grant Rankin, knowing a student's emotional intensities—what Polish psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski called "overexcitabilities"—is also key to teaching gifted students.

Dabrowski identified five areas of sensitivity that are strongly related to giftedness: psychomotor, sensual, intellectual, imaginational, and emotional. Overexcitabilities will often appear as quirks, such as compulsive talking or organizing, heightened sensitivity to smells or tastes, insatiable curiosity, or daydreaming.

Knowing a student's overexcitabilities can help teachers shape engaging—and personalized—learning experiences. An imaginational student will benefit from an assignment that he's free to complete in a unique way.

An intellectual student will prefer to investigate why certain areas of the world struggle with starvation rather than simply listing those areas. Although we tend to see overexcitabilities negatively, they are often accompanied by great creativity, imagination, and drive.

According to NAGC, research shows that enabling gifted students to work together in groups boosts their academic achievement and benefits other students in the classroom, as well. When gifted students work together, they challenge themselves in unexpected ways.

They bounce ideas off one another and take a peer's idea to a new place. They also learn that as smart as they are, they, too, must exert effort with challenging content—and that they'll sometimes fail along the way. That said, gifted kids need to work both in and out of their group.

This approach relies on planning lessons or units at different tiers of difficulty. But does this require teachers to add to their already full plates? Teachers have to plan for their lessons, so why not develop deep and complex activities for high-ability students at the same time? This one way of planning—providing work at the entry, advanced, and extension levels or at varying Depth of Knowledge Levels—offers a multiplicity of ways to learn. It may take more time in the planning stage, but it is ultimately more efficient because bored students aren't acting out or zoning out in class—they've got challenging work to do—and struggling students are getting support.