Gifted and Talented and Then What?
Just finished an assignment on gifted and talented education, and three basic strategies one can use to work with G&T students.
In brief, they are as follows:
Acceleration: skipping grades, doing work above your current grade level, AP courses, etc. Generally involves grouping students into classes by ability, but can also be done by asking the student to work independently or in a pull-out class with a gifted education resource teacher.
Curriculum compacting: Students kept in regular class, but are not required to do as much skill practice and drill as the other students. Instead, the practice time is replaced by student initiated projects, creative projects, critical thinking, or problem solving tasks related to the topic that the class is working on.
Enrichment: students given the opportunity to explore topics not normally included in the curriculum.
I personally found that I never liked acceleration in elementary school, since it generally meant I got stuck with a math textbook in the back of the class working on my own. I vastly preferred it when the teacher did some form of curriculum compacting or enrichment. (I think acceleration works a lot better in the middle and high school environments.)
So I was wondering, what techniques or strategies did your elementary school teachers use that you thought worked really well? Which bombed?
Here's one that bombed for me: Because I always finished my history reading and comprehension questions quickly, my fifth grade teacher wanted to give me a "fun" extra project to work on. It was a disaster. She knew I liked to write and I seemed to like history, so she asked me to write a short biography of every woman on a poster of famous women. The assignment was very vague, I had no idea how much I was supposed to write, and I wasn't really interested in biographies at that point in my life. But I didn't know how to tell the teacher that I didn't want to do it, and I got so stressed about what exactly I was supposed to do that I started to stay home from school, complaining of stomach aches. My mom finally figured out that I was freaking out about this enrichment activity, and promised she'd ask the teacher if I could skip it. The teacher was quick to retract the assignment, and I ended up spending the extra time doing math practice for the Math Olympics instead. I guess that's a good example of letting the student's preferences take precedence ...
In brief, they are as follows:
Acceleration: skipping grades, doing work above your current grade level, AP courses, etc. Generally involves grouping students into classes by ability, but can also be done by asking the student to work independently or in a pull-out class with a gifted education resource teacher.
Curriculum compacting: Students kept in regular class, but are not required to do as much skill practice and drill as the other students. Instead, the practice time is replaced by student initiated projects, creative projects, critical thinking, or problem solving tasks related to the topic that the class is working on.
Enrichment: students given the opportunity to explore topics not normally included in the curriculum.
I personally found that I never liked acceleration in elementary school, since it generally meant I got stuck with a math textbook in the back of the class working on my own. I vastly preferred it when the teacher did some form of curriculum compacting or enrichment. (I think acceleration works a lot better in the middle and high school environments.)
So I was wondering, what techniques or strategies did your elementary school teachers use that you thought worked really well? Which bombed?
Here's one that bombed for me: Because I always finished my history reading and comprehension questions quickly, my fifth grade teacher wanted to give me a "fun" extra project to work on. It was a disaster. She knew I liked to write and I seemed to like history, so she asked me to write a short biography of every woman on a poster of famous women. The assignment was very vague, I had no idea how much I was supposed to write, and I wasn't really interested in biographies at that point in my life. But I didn't know how to tell the teacher that I didn't want to do it, and I got so stressed about what exactly I was supposed to do that I started to stay home from school, complaining of stomach aches. My mom finally figured out that I was freaking out about this enrichment activity, and promised she'd ask the teacher if I could skip it. The teacher was quick to retract the assignment, and I ended up spending the extra time doing math practice for the Math Olympics instead. I guess that's a good example of letting the student's preferences take precedence ...