5 Simple Strategies for Working with Gifted
- 1. Five Simple Strategies for Working with Gifted Students Todd Stanley Gifted Services Coordinator
- 2. 1. Higher Level Thinking Use the levels of Bloom’s to guide you Higher Level Lower Level Thinking
- 3. How do we “move it to the next level” By having the questions or product be something in which students either analyze, evaluate, or create. Do your assessments, classroom discussion, and/or conversations require students to think at a higher level Do your products require students to think at this level and challenge them to go deeper. A product can be anything from answering a one sentence question to spending weeks physically creating something that captures the skill of the standard. It is not the difficulty of the question/product that causes students to grow, it is the level of thinking you are asking them to do.
- 4. Applying Bloom’s Remember – List the items used by Goldilocks while she was in the Bears’ house. Understand – Explain why Goldilocks liked Baby Bear’s chair the best. Apply – Demonstrate what Goldilocks would use if she came to your house. Analyze – Compare this story to reality. What events could not really happen. Evaluate – Judge whether Goldilocks was good or bad. Defend your opinion. Create – Propose how the story would be different if it were Goldilocks and the Three Fish. Using the story Goldilocks and the Three Bears
- 5. When to Use Higher Level Thinking Should be embedded in the day-to-day classroom Bell ringer Exit ticket Daily work Whole/small group discussion Seminar Assessments, both multiple choice and constructed response Group work Projects
- 7. 2. Flexible Grouping This is the idea of putting students in groups based on ability for the specific skill you are teaching Could be performance-based Could be ability grouping Some buildings have already been cluster grouping Could use pre-assessment to determine the level of their understanding (K-W-L chart) Need to stress the flexible part, these should not be assigned for the entire year
- 8. Planning for Grouping: Questions to Consider When does grouping benefit students? When does grouping facilitate instruction? Which activities lend themselves to group work? How do you determine group membership?
- 9. Group Membership Can be determined by: • Readiness • Interest • Reading Level • Skill Level • Background Knowledge • Social Skills
- 10. Keys to Grouping Provide variety Offer choices Create ground rules Evaluate students individually Compact the curriculum Incorporate creative thinking
- 11. 3. Differentiated Centers Teachers base differentiated stations on student assessment data, whereas a traditional station is based on whole-group instruction. In a differentiated station, students work within multilevel resources, whereas traditional station resources are not differentiated. Differentiated stations have tiered assignments, which include varied student responses, whereas a traditional learning station only has one level of response for all.
- 12. Multilevel Center Activities An open-ended activity is where all students in the group tackle the same assignment, but the end product will differ for beginner, intermediate, and advanced clusters. A tiered activity is when students are doing the same activity, but it’s tiered according to their difficulty level. Learning menus, or choice boards, are varied activities that give students options on how they want to learn a concept. They often mimic a tic-tac-toe board where your classroom would pick three activities to complete (one from each row) to form a line. Differentiated instruction menus benefit all students because you can tailor each board to students’ readiness, learning style, or interest, and kids think they are a lot of fun.
- 14. Four Corners Having independent research projects for students to work on should they choose upon completing their work Can be connected to the standards, can just be enrichment in the area of study, could be completely created by the student Student could work on the project for months, completing a little here and there
- 16. 4. Teach Interactively Allow the students to teach Allow them to choose the method of teaching Organize resources in order to free yourself to work with individual students As an ancillary effect students have a greater appreciation of how difficult it is to teach
- 18. Advantages to Cooperative Learning It has the potential to produce a level of engagement that other forms of learning cannot Students may explain things better to another student than a teacher to a class. Students learn how to teach one another and explain material in their own words Interpersonal and collaboration skills can be learned in a cooperative learning activity Cooperative learning has the potential to meet more learning style needs more of the time than individualized direct instruction Sends the symbolic message that the class is egalitarian Higher ability students are in a position to be experts, leaders, models and teachers
- 19. Be cautious Don’t just put the gifted student with a student who is struggling If gifted students already know the grade-level standards, it may seem logical to have them teach others. This is faulty logic. It assumes that teaching struggling students is something gifted kids innately know how to do. Most gifted students do not know how to tutor others. They often are frustrated that struggling students don’t understand what they perceive as easy. Peer tutoring using gifted students also takes away time they should be using for more advanced work, more rigor and more higher-level thinking.
- 20. 5. High Expectations/Rigor Students have a funny way of jumping over wherever you set the bar When a student receives an E, what does that mean Should not mean effort Should not be that the assignment requirements were met, that is an M By pure definition of E = exceed, the student should be exceeding what is expected from the assignment Even if you do give traditional letter grades, how challenging is it for a students to earn an A
- 22. Examples of High Expectations Techniques No opt out - a method of eliminating the possibility of muttering, “I don’t know,” in response to a question Right Is Right - is about the difference between partially right and all-the-way right. Should expect 100% correct Stretch It - the sequence of learning does not end with a right answer; reward right answers with follow-up questions that extend knowledge and test for reliability Format Matters - prepare your students to succeed by requiring complete sentences and proficient grammar every chance you get Without Apology - sometimes the way we talk about expectations inadvertently lowers them. If we’re not on guard, we can unwittingly apologize for teaching worthy content and even for the students themselves - Taken from the book Teach Like a Champion
- 23. Increase rigor through differentiation Multiple Paths of Differentiation Content Differentiation Process Differentiation Product Differentiation Environmental Differentiation
- 24. Content Reading Partners/ Reading Buddies Read/Summarize Visual Organizer/Summarizer Choral Reading Note Taking Organizers Guided Notes
- 25. Process Tiered Tasks/Products Group Investigations Model/demonstrations by teacher Use part-to-whole and whole-to-part approaches Problem Based Inquiry Alternative Forms of Assessments
- 26. Product Diagram Article Timeline Scrapbook Debate Flow Chart Mock Trial
- 27. Environment Flexible learning spaces and options Whole Group (lecture, presentation, demonstration, video, guest speaker) Work in a cooperative group Vary teacher mode of presentation (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, concrete, abstract, multi-sensory) Adjust for gender, culture, language differences