|
Hi Myesha,
Although I am still a pre-service teacher, I have raised two gifted teens of my own and have seen how frustrating school can be when they are forced to spend hours doing work that is too easy or uninspiring for them.
Here are the things that have made them happier students:
Having the opportunity to read more challenging texts (e.g. college vs. high school), work more challenging problems, answer more challenging questions
Being given choices of the type of assignment or the focus of the assignment
Getting to choose the method of demonstrating their learning (e.g. poster, paper, diagram, Power Point, video, writing a computer program, etc.)
Being given the opportunity to propose an alternative assignment that covers the same content.
Compacting and being able to move at a more rapid pace
As Alec Richardson noted, gifted learners often do well when they are allowed to personalize their lesson plans. When gifted kids have a project that is meaningful to them, they often willingly spend extra time on it and come up with something amazing.
The following paper has some excellent ideas for differentiating for gifted students:
Stepanek, J., & Northwest Regional Educational Lab, P., OR. Mathematics and Science Education Center. (1999). The Inclusive Classroom. Meeting the Needs of Gifted Students: Differentiating Mathematics and Science Instruction. It’s Just Good Teaching Series. http://educationnorthwest.org/sites/default/files/12.99.pdf
This second article (available on the NSTA site) gives students a choice of which project to do, but puts a higher value (i.e. higher maximum grades) on projects that require more thought. The authors made this available to all of their students, with good results.
Bittel, K., & Hernandez, D. (2006, December). Differentiated Assessment. Science Scope, 49–51.
|