Gifted Students
Who are gifted learners?
• High Incidence
• Gifted students will show patterns of
development that exceed their peers in
one or several of the intelligences.
What is giftedness?
•Intellectually gifted
•Creatively gifted
•Socioaffectively gifted
•SensoriMotor gifted
Incidence
History of Gifted Learners
• Above Level Testing
• First person to conduct above level testing was Lewis M.
Terman.
• Army Alpha and the Terman Group Test was given to a 7-yearold girl in November 1919. She scored 71 on the Army
Alpha—equal to the average score of a 14 “White American
male” and 151 on the Terman Group Test, which was the
median score for Grade 12.
• Terman and Fenton did not write down why the 7 year old was
given these tests.
• Hollingworth administered these tests to see if students that
were at or near the 1916 Stanford-Binet IQ test.
History continued…..
• SAT – Scholastic Aptitude Test – administered
mostly for colleges, are different for different
colleges,
• Julian Stanley in 1969 administered one to a young boy
aged 13, the boy passed and earned two degrees by the
age of 17.
• Talent Searching – Stanley discovered 200 middle
school children that tested above average and
developed accelerated mathematical instruction
• Has spread to other universities around USA
Physiological Characteristics
• “Gifted children possess abilities of
exceptionally high capabilities with respect
to intellect, creativity or skills associated
with specific disciplines. A gifted child’s
exceptionality is a gift. Gifted children often,
however, do not demonstrate outstanding
abilities in all areas. This uneven
development, known as asynchronous
development, can create challenges both at
home and at school.”
Children who are gifted look
the same as children who are
not gifted. There are no
physical “tells.” There are
however intellectual “tells”:
Learning Traits
• read well and widely
• have an unusually large vocabulary
• are widely informed about many topics
• have a keen sense of humour
• are creative and imaginative
• work quickly and remembers with little practice
• have a long attention span
• see abstract relationships, alternative views
• be curious and/or have strong interests.
Learning Traits
• reveal unusual or unique responses
• be highly self-directed and independent
• be unusually perceptive of or sensitive to feelings and expectations
of others
• seem intense in expression or feelings of justice and/or empathy
• demonstrate perfectionism
• appear out of synch with age-mates or prefer the company of
adults.
• These are taken directly out of the SD68 Handbook
Challenges
• refuses to do rote homework or be bored with routine tasks
• has difficulty with transitions and resists moving into another topic
• is self-critical and impatient with failures
• disagrees frequently or is critical of others, including their teachers
• makes jokes or puns at inappropriate times
• is emotionally sensitive if things go wrong (may overreact, get angry or
cry easily)
• is not interested in details and may hand in messy work
• refuses to accept authority or is non-conforming and stubborn
• tends to dominate others
Challenges
• Asynchronous development
• confusion and challenges in supporting the gifted child
• High expectations create pressure on students
• Emotion management
Misconceptions
Gifted children are happy, popular and welladjusted in schools;
A child who receives poor grades cannot be
gifted,
Gifted students don’t need help, they do fine on
their own.
These misconceptions lead to a lack of
recognition, funding, and enrichment
programs within the different school districts.
Identification and Designation
• Early identification of students who are
gifted is an important element in planning
and delivering appropriate educational
programs for these students.
• Some gifted students whose abilities are not
identified and addressed early may exhibit
secondary emotional and behavioral
difficulties.
Identification and Designation
• Every effort should be made to ensure that
screening and identification procedures are
unbiased with respect to:
• language,
• culture,
• gender,
• physical ability,
• learning or other disability.
Identification and Designation
• Identification and assessment
should be carried out using
multiple criteria and information
from a variety of sources, all of
which are valid components for
identification.
Identification Criteria:
• Student records, portfolios, grades, anecdotal information, outstanding
achievement or accomplishments in an area of strength.
• Student interviews, inventories.
• Formal test result (intellectual ability, achievement, aptitude, creativity).
• Nomination by parents, peers, or self-nomination.
• Nomination by teachers trained in gifted education.
• Nomination by the classroom teacher.
• Student talents, interests, and task commitment (in an area of
talent/interest).
Identification involves
collaboration among:
• Classroom teachers,
• School-based team,
• District Gifted Education Staff
• The student
• Parents.
Criteria/Guidelines for
Making Referrals:
• A child is handling the classroom curriculum with ease and
appears to need greater challenges.
• A child learns new concepts at a faster rate than his/her
classmates.
• A child understands new concepts in greater depth than
his/her classmates (asks unusual questions, makes
perceptive statements).
• A child has become a behavior problem (despite obvious
capability) or shows inconsistency in what he/she produces.
• A child is performing two grade levels above placement.
A referral may be initiated at
the school by:
• Classroom
Teacher/Administrator/School Support
teacher/School Based Team
• Student
• Parent
• Student Support Services Staff.
6 Profiles of gifted students
• Type 1: The successful gifted Student
• Type 2: The Challenging/divergent gifted student
• Type 3: The Underground gifted student
• Type 4: The dropout gifted student
• Type 5: The double labeled gifted student
• Type 6: The autonomous gifted student
Identification and Designation
• Once the decision is made to designate the
child as gifted, an IEP is developed by the
classroom teacher and/or school support
teacher and parents.
• Schools can receive help in developing the
IEP as well as request resources and ideas
for programming from the District
Enrichment/Gifted Resource Teacher.
Five areas to consider in the
IEP are the student's:
• academic achievement,
• learning styles and strengths,
• interests,
• special abilities, and
• visions and goals for the future
Identification and Designation
• Parents may opt to have their child
receive a private psycho
educational assessment through a
registered psychologist.
Tools used in identification
process
• Highly Able Learner profiles 1 and 2
• Raven Standard Progressive Matrice. This is a nonverbal assessment designed to measure a child’s
ability to solve problems and think clearly.
• WIAT II (Weschler Individual Achievement Test,
Second Edition), or Woodcock Johnson III Scores
in the range of Superior or Very Superior range
should be met for consideration of gifted.
Anecdotal Story
Gagné’s 10 commandments
for academic talent development
•
Acknowledge the large diversity of gifts and talents and qualify qualitatively
•
Be aware of the differences in intensity, from mild levels (10%) to the extreme ones
•
Invite school administrators and program coordinators to expand their list of
identification criteria
•
Invite school administrators and program coordinators to expand their selection ratio
•
Recognise and respond early to enrichment needs
•
Condense the curriculum
•
Allow academic acceleration
•
Provide meaningful enrichment
•
Non-inclusion
•
Be cautious, when you are dreaming of fame, there is room for more modest
achievement goals.
Adaptations and Strategies
• Gifted Students benefit from lessons with multiple
entry points, working with the same content at
different levels of Blooms taxonomy, or using different
sets of resources.
• Develop a student profile: helps to provide a deeper
understanding of an individual's unique interests, styles
and abilities. By gathering information from a variety
of sources, teachers and school-based teams are in a
better position to make educational decisions that will
enhance the student's development.
Adaptations and Strategies
Acrostic Topics,
Barometer
Howdy Partner!
Job Wanted
Poster Listening
Teams Paper Pass
Quick Questions
Word by Word
Word Cloud
Closure
Round Robin,
Sentence Starter,
Snowball Fight
Think Pair Share
Venn Hoops
Walking in their
Shoes
What’s in the
bag? 52 Things to
do Conversation
Cards
Artifact Reveal
Board Quiz
Building an
Experience
Bulletin Blog
Concept
Clarification
Invention
Convention
Playlist
Research
Scavengers
Round Robin
Self-Reporting
Teacher-Teacher
Text Message
Theme Boards
Through our own
Lens
Traveling Teams
We Interview
What Would
They Say?
Why and Because
References
•
http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/02/23/no-room-for-gifted-kids/
•
http://www.vsb.bc.ca/programs/giftedenrichment-education
•
http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/specialed/gifted/
•
Gifted learner parent information handbook. Students Support
Services, School District 68.
http://www.sd68.bc.ca/edocuments/sssparents/gifted_/parenthandb
ookr/parenthandbookrevisedjanjun30.pd
•
Gagné, Françoys. Ten Commandments for AcademicTalent
Development; Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, Canada.
Gifted Child Quarterly, Volume 51, Number 2, Spring 2007. P. 93118. Hosted at http://online.sagepub.com.