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High-achieving young people often credit their accomplishments to the help of a caring educator who fueled their interests and guided their learning. Don’t miss the opportunity to be this type of educator.
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- Take a course on gifted education as part of your certificate renewal or continuing education requirement.
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- If you have gifted students in a mixed-ability classroom, implement lesson plans using themes, rather than specific curricular materials. This will help you to adapt the curriculum to each child’s ability level, while maintaining continuity. Offer more “projects” than worksheets. See “Successful Strategies for Teaching Gifted Learners”.
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- Offer students access to books that contain challenging vocabulary words and complex themes. Work with your school or community librarians to find challenging books with appropriate content.
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- Allow gifted students to work on long-term projects with tangible results. Create opportunities for them to share their work with their classmates, schoolmates and with the community at large. When appropriate, encourage them to enter their work in competitions.
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- Even if your school currently has a “pull-out” program for gifted students, be aware that it may not be a good match for all gifted students. Highly gifted learners need to be grouped with their intellectual peers in more rigorous self-contained academic classes.
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- If a student has shown mastery of a concept before the rest of the class, give him permission to work independently on a more challenging project, either in the classroom, in the library or in the computer lab. Use distance-learning materials. Collaborate with other teachers to see if the child can attend a higher-level class.
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- Start discussions with other teachers in the break room or cafeteria about gifted education. Brainstorm what your school and district could do to improve the educational experience for bright children. See “What the Research Says about Gifted Learners”.
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- Grade according to each child’s ability. For instance, writing “Super” on a gifted writer’s essay does little to help nurture her talent. Correct grammatical problems; give her tips on word choice, paragraph order and persuasiveness. Encourage her family to locate a writing mentor who can develop her talents further.
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- Let students from lower grades come to your class for certain subjects if their abilities are a match for your curriculum. Mention this possibility to other teachers in your school.
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- Copy articles on gifted education for other educators; you’ll find many relevant articles in the Davidson Database.
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- Help students with particular talents find mentors within the community. For example, introduce a promising young mathematician to a college math professor.
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- Lobby your school district to create a magnet school for the gifted or a magnet program within another school.
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- Lobby your school to identify gifted children, or if your school already has an identification program, lobby to begin the process in Kindergarten.
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- If you suspect a child in your class is gifted, send a note home to her parents encouraging them to have her assessed.
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- Work collaboratively with parents to better meet the needs of gifted children. Numerous studies confirm that parents provide valuable information about gifted children’s abilities and needs and should be consulted in planning educational programs.
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- Volunteer to coach academic teams after school. Recruit top students.
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- Write or call the university where you received your teaching degree and encourage the school to offer more classes (or a certificate) in gifted education.
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- Join the Davidson Institute’s Educator’s Guild to obtain free consultations with trained professionals in gifted eduation, to interact online with other educators, and to get valuable information and resources for your gifted learners.
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-Excerpted from Genius Denied, pp. 183-185, with minor modifications and links added. |