Gifted Students

1. Gifted Students

2. Who are gifted learners? • High Incidence • Gifted students will show patterns of development that exceed their peers in one or several of the intelligences.

3. What is giftedness? • Intellectually gifted • Creatively gifted • Socioaffectively gifted • SensoriMotor gifted

4. Incidence

5. 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-year-old 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.

6. 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

7. 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.”

8. Children who are gifted look the same as children who are not gifted. There are no physical “tells.” There are however intellectual “tells”:

9. 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.

10. 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

11. 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 dominateothers

12. Challenges • Asynchronous development • confusion and challenges in supporting the gifted child • High expectations create pressure on students  • Emotion management

13. Misconceptions Gifted children are happy, popular and well-adjusted in schools; Achild 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.

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. 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).

18. Identification involves collaboration among: • Classroom teachers, • School-based team, • District Gifted Education Staff • The student • Parents. 

19. 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.

20. A referral may be initiated at the school by: • Classroom Teacher/Administrator/School Support teacher/School Based Team • Student • Parent • Student Support Services Staff.

22. 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

23. 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.

24. 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

25. Identification and Designation • Parents may opt to have their child receive a private psycho educational assessment through a registered psychologist.

26. Tools used in identification process • Highly Able Learner profiles 1 and 2 • Raven Standard Progressive Matrice. This is a non-verbal 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.

27. Anecdotal Story

28. Gagné’s10 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.

29. Adaptations and Strategies • Gifted Studentsbenefit 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.

30. Adaptations and Strategies

31. 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_/parenthandbookr/parenthandbookrevisedjanjun30.pd • Gagné, Françoys. TenCommandments for AcademicTalentDevelopment; Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, Canada. Gifted Child Quarterly, Volume 51, Number 2, Spring 2007. P. 93-118. Hosted at http://online.sagepub.com.