Differentiation in the Gifted Classroom

2009 November 9
by jeffreyshoemaker

Jeffrey Shoemaker is a new contributor to the High Ability Blog. A Gifted Intervention Specialist for the Lima City School District, Shoemaker also taught 6th Grade Social Studies for 6 years. After earning a Bachelor’s and a Master’s Degree from The Ohio State University specializing in Elementary Education, Shoemaker also earned a Master’s Degree from Bowling Green State University specializing in Gifted Education.

One of the big topics in Education is Differentiation. There are so many different definitions, and interpretations of differentiation out there to comb through, it can be tough to understand. Differentiation is something that gifted intervention specialists shouldn’t be scared of. Instead, it is something that should be “taken by the horns” and used in the classroom to give students that individual learning experience they honestly desire.

Will The Real Definition of Differentiation Please Stand Up?

So what is the real definition of differentiation? My favorite definition is from the resource Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom by Susan Winebrenner, says differentiation means “providing gifted students with different tasks and activities than their peers—tasks that lead to real learning for them”, (p.5). That’s what should be happening in classrooms. Children are not the same, so their instruction should not be the same. This is especially true with gifted children.

For teachers who differentiate their lessons I want to tell you this: great job! This is the best way for gifted children to learn. So many times regular education teachers think that since a student is labeled gifted they should give them extra work, or they will let them be tutors to the students who are struggling. Both are wrong. Students, who get the concept, let them go deeper with it. Let them experience divergent thinking with the concept. Stop limiting gifted children. They will surprise you. Never put the gifted child in the role of a teacher. They already have enough stress at school just trying to fit in. Don’t put that extra stress on them being a “teacher”.

Differentiation in the Gifted Classroom

How is differentiation supposed to look in a gifted classroom? The gifted intervention specialist has so many different tools at their disposal no matter if they are in a pull-out resource room, or embedded in the regular classroom. These tools work, and gifted students will experience learning through them. Here are two tools that can be used in the classroom, but realize this is just a short list. At the end of this blog, I will give some resources that have this strategy in it.

Tic-Tac-Toe Boards

My favorite is the Tic-Tac-Toe board. I use Tic-Tac-Toe boards the most in my classroom because it fits my style of giving students a chance to take charge of their own learning. If you haven’t used Tic-Tac-Toe Boards before let me describe it to you. Tic-Tac-Toe boards are divided into nine boxes. Each box has an assignment in it. I usually spread out the assignments so that there are different levels of difficulty in each row. The student has to choose three assignments that are across each row, column or diagonal (just like in the game Tic-Tac-Toe).

Students love the choices they have. They feel like they are in command of their education. If you haven’t tried this strategy, try it! This is one strategy that is easy to implement, and to change when you go from unit to unit.

Independent Study Menus

This is my second favorite strategy for Differentiation. I have done this several times in different ways. You just have to find ways that suit your comfort zone and teaching skills, which will benefit the students you teach.

One way I have executed this strategy is by giving the students a topic and allowing them to pick products off a menu that they would like to do. Again, I honestly believe that if you give students a stake in there education they will be successful, and meaningful learning will take place..

The other way I have done this is to set very few parameters and allow students to pick a topic they are either interested in or passionate about and allow them to pick products from a menu. I also add that the products would have to match the types of products from the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Conclusions

Differentiation is an important part gifted classroom. Gifted education teachers / intervention specialists should see themselves as a facilitator more than a teacher. You are there to help them learn in different ways, and let them experience learning in a way that is exciting, challenging, fun, and meaningful.

If you have never tried differentiation in your classroom, take it slow. Be comfortable with one strategy. Then implement another. Doing it this way will definitely improve your teaching, and will give you another tool to use to help your students succeed.

Resources

Coil, Carolyn. (2004). Standard-based activities and assessments for the differentiated classroom. USA: Pieces of Learning.

Roberts, Ed.D, Julia L., & Inman, Tracy F. (2009). Strategies for differentiating instruction: best practices for the classroom. Wako, Texas: Prufrock Press Inc.

Winebrenner, Susan. (2001). Teaching gifted kids in the regular classroom. Minneapolis: Free Spirit Publishing.

National Novel Writing Month

2009 November 1

Stanley Fish recently wrote a short blog series on what colleges should teach in writing classes and it got me thinking about what our public schools should be teaching in writing classes as well.  Then I remembered that they don’t teach writing.  Or, if they do, it is part of a smooshed together curricular process of authentic learning. The conjunction-junctions of my childhood are long gone and the structure of grammar and formal composition which so many gifted kids yearn for in the regular classroom simply doesn’t exist. In fact, a friend and master teacher once complained to me that students learn more about sentence structure in foreign language class than they ever do in the study of English.   Composition and grammar are the brushes and tubes of paint an artist uses to create: the artist must, at some point, grasp the function of the tools he or she employs in the process of creating.  The ability to turn a phrase, parry a pun, develop an alliterative line, create rhythm and form – these are the tools of the craft of writing.  And, as Fish says, “writing is its own subject, and a deeper and more fascinating one than the content it makes available.”

November is National Novel Writing Month – at least according to the folks at NaNoWriMo – and I have dithered in a sea of “desire to write and tasks to complete” which have left me unable to officially commit to it this year. But the basic premise of the exercise is very compelling – “National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.” Give yourself a large word count goal each day during the month of November and let your creative muse perch on your shoulder untethered to revisions or edits. Simply let the words flow and create.

There is a young writers component to this as well:

“National Novel Writing Month’s Young Writers Program provides kids and teens with a month-long language arts experience that improves self-esteem, teaches perseverance, and radically alters their relationship to writing and literature.

We do this through a youth-oriented website where kids and teens can mingle with other budding authors, get advice from beloved writers, and find inspiration as they tackle our book-writing challenge. And we do it through free, fun curriculum and lesson plans for K-12 teachers facilitating the Young Writers Program in their classrooms.

In 2008, over 20,000 kids and teens in 600 classrooms worldwide took part in National Novel Writing Month’s Young Writers Program. In 2009, we’re expecting over 1,000 classrooms to spend November bookin’ with us.”

Lifting the velvet rope and stepping inside the room has huge benefits: as a way to encourage expression in written form and explore individual creativity which is limitless in scope; as a touchstone to help battle blank page syndrome in the future; and as a compositional exercise with long term opportunities to teach grammar and form through later revisions.

NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program gives schools an opportunity to embrace a collaborative on-line learning environment where students can progress at their own pace. Guided learning through coaches, admired professionals, masters of the craft and an international cast of fellow students creates a very large studio. And so many opportunities to teach composition, editing and craft exist from December on. For so many writers young and old, it’s simply the impetus to begin.

 

 

 

NAGC Conference in November

2009 October 23
by Jeanne Bernish

G2G-logo_date

Since not everyone will be able to attend the Conference in St. Louis, Prufrock Press is sponsoring a Virtual Option On Saturday, November 7th offering 17 live sessions from the comfort of your computer.  Visit the NAGC Virtual Convention page for more information and to register.

Readiness

2009 October 18

Last week, the New York Times published “Students Held Back Did Better,” an article referencing the Rand Corp. study: “Ending Social Promotion Without Leaving Children Behind: The Case of New York City.” The study analyzed Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s effort to end social promotion in New York City schools, holding back students who scored at the lowest level in state English and math tests. The bottom line results:

“The RAND report, released Thursday, found that students who were kept in the fifth grade for an additional year showed significant improvement in standardized tests over the next three years compared with low-performing students before the policy went into effect.

The policy requires schools to give extra help to lagging students. The RAND study found some positive results from these interventions. Frequent attendance at special Saturday classes had no effect on English performance, but some benefits for math. The results were similar for summer school.

“What is really important to understand is that we find these short-term benefits for the students who receive the extra services as well as those who are retained,” said Jennifer Sloan McCombs, a lead author of the report. “The important policy question is whether they go into the long term.”

The study also surveyed teachers and students and found that students said that they had no less confidence after they were held back.”

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to join hundreds of other gifted education advocates and educators on a free OGTOC (Our Gifted and Talented Online Conferences) Ning Group webinar “Five Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options” featuring Deborah L. Ruf Ph.D. Dr. Ruf addressed the five different levels of giftedness and spoke to an important piece of the education puzzle: readiness. For the gifted student to be kept with age peers in the regular classroom is to ignore that child’s readiness to learn more challenging material at a faster pace. And, according to A Nation Deceived:

“America’s schools routinely avoid academic acceleration, the easiest and most effective way to help highly capable students. While the popular perception is that a child who skips a grade will be socially stunted, fifty years of research shows that moving bright students ahead often makes them happy.”

Fifty years of data. Yet nationally we continue to believe the mythology that “grade skipping” is a bad thing to be avoided at all costs. Yet nationally we continue to believe that holding underperforming students back would damage their confidence.

If school reform is going to serve the needs of all student populations it will have to abandon the strictures of the age-specific classroom. I can’t think of a better time to explore this issue than now – with some states considering lengthening the school year or the school day to meet the needs of students who require additional seat time to meet standards. How devastating for the high ability student!

Fortunately, in Ohio, our State Board of Education adopted a plan for credit flexibility “designed to broaden the scope of curricular options available to students, increase the depth of study possible for a particular subject, and allow tailoring of learning time and/or conditions. These are ways in which aspects of learning can be customized around more of students’ interests and needs.” With the plan for high school students – which will phase in during the 2009 – 2010:

Students may earn credits by:

* Completing coursework;
* Testing out of or demonstrating mastery of course content; or
* Pursuing one or more “educational options” (e.g., distance learning, educational travel, independent study, an internship, music, arts, after-school/tutorial program, community service or other engagement projects and sports).

Credit flexibility is intended to motivate and increase student learning by allowing:

* Access to more learning resources, especially real-world experiences
* Customization around individual student needs
* Use of multiple measures of learning, especially those where students demonstrate what they know and can do, apply the learning, or document performance

Meeting each student at the place where they need to be – at the point where they are ready to learn – should be our national goal. Not holding back the high ability student because they didn’t sit through a year’s worth of lectures and activities on topics already mastered – nor pushing the struggling student ahead when they may need more time to master content.

OAGC Conference – it must be Fall

2009 October 12
by Jeanne Bernish

I spent Sunday in Columbus in the Easton Hilton, on the perimeter of great shopping, to join in the parent day fun at OAGC yesterday. The drive up from Cincinnati was beautiful – the trees are just now beginning to show their colors. And I enjoyed the trip even more with a good friend along for the ride and the luxury to chat, uninterrupted, for two hours. [the trip back was dark but clear - the only unpleasantness being the car-filling stench of skunk and Odour 'de Rumpke as we passed the landfill just outside of town - whew!]

I hope to have some links up soon on parent resources from the ODE (via the Javits Grant) – I just want to find out if they are available to folks outside of Ohio first.

As always it is great to connect with other people interested in and passionate about gifted education. My presentation introducing Social Networking wasn’t a complete disaster – and I think I may even have won over some new Twitter converts in the process – so it’s all good!

OAGC Fall Conference

2009 October 10
by Jeanne Bernish

This weekend marks the beginning of the Ohio Association for Gifted Children (OAGC) Annual Fall Conference in Columbus, Ohio. This year’s keynote address: “The Top Ten Strategies for Raising a Happy and Successful Gifted Child” will be delivered by Dr. James R. Delisle, author of 11 books, including the best-selling “Gifted Kids Survival Guide: A Teen Handbook” (with Judy Galbraith) and “Once Upon a Mind: The Stories and Scholars of Gifted Child Education.” I will be Tweeting from the event Sunday evening.

When Gifted Kids Don't Have All The Answers

When Gifted Kids Don't Have All The Answers

Parenting Gifted Kids

Parenting Gifted Kids

Information on the Conference and (late) registration information can be found at the OAGC website. It will be great to connect with gifted education advocates, educators and parents and I look forward to delivering a brief introduction to social media to the group. If you haven’t yet joined your state gifted organization I would encourage you to do so now. They offer a wealth of information and resources and are an important and authoritative voice in gifted education advocacy.

Again, With Maryland

2009 October 5
by Jeanne Bernish

Jay Mathews reports in “Class Struggle” on Drew Gamblin, a 16 year old gifted African American student at Howard High School in Ellicott City, Maryland who has been hampered by policy and forced to repeat curriculum (already mastered at a college level) in order to fulfill graduation requirements.

Gamblin scored in the 92nd percentile on the PSAT two years ago. His education path has been a bit untraditional – with public school, home school and a little community college thrown into the mix (not an unusual combination for PG and EG kids). Yet he is being forced by a Maryland high school into repeating curriculum already mastered.

As Mathews reports:
“Most American high schools look hard for ways to give struggling students their diplomas. Maryland let 4,000 students graduate this year by doing special projects when they didn’t pass the required state tests. Meanwhile, Drew Gamblin is told he has to listen to old lectures and take tests he has already passed in order to achieve his goal of finishing high school.”

A spokesperson for the school complains that they have already spent “an overwhelming amount of time” on this student. Here’s a thought – bend a little. Instead of forcing this square peg into a round hole – let him demonstrate mastery and move along – without forcing “seat time” in a classroom.

The Beat of a Different Drummer

2009 September 30
by Jeanne Bernish

I am always troubled to find instances of arbitrary dismissal of accelerative options by public schools in America. The practice is even more egregious when paired with wholesale elimination of gifted services in the name of budget restrictions. By placing the high ability student in a classroom with no accelerative options and no enrichment services to help meet their individual education needs, public schools run the risk of driving them into a daily routine void of authentic learning. Marking “seat” time in each grade level these student lose years of learning. It is precisely during a time of economic hardship that we should encourage schools to reexamine and then implement cost effective interventions to help meet the needs of high ability students. And no intervention is more cost effective than acceleration.

“Grade skipping” (whole grade acceleration) is only one of 18 different accelerative options identified in “A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students,” by Nicholas Colangelo, Susan G. Assouline, Miraca U. M. Gross. Yet, as we are reminded by a recent blog post on “The More Child,” there are some schools where whole grade acceleration is routinely dismissed. And in “Go Laura, Sorry Kay,” Switched On Mom points out that math intervention isn’t the only area that needs accommodation in our schools. More disturbing still is the reality that Montgomery County Public School’s gifted education experts seem unaware of the depth of research in support of “grade skipping.”

Why do some schools deny their high ability students the opportunity to learn at an appropriate pace “matching the level and complexity of the curriculum with the readiness and motivation of the student?” – according to “A Nation Deceived,” primarily because they have:

Limited familiarity with the research on acceleration
Philosophy that children must be kept with their age group
Belief that acceleration hurries children out of childhood
Fear that acceleration hurts children socially
Political concerns about equity
Worry that other students will be offended if one child is accelerated.

Not everyone moves at the same pace. It’s about time that our education system recognizes this and moves to implement research-based accommodations instead of sticking to tired old formulas based on subjective reasoning.

Social Media Page

2009 September 24
by Jeanne Bernish

Last week I added a “Social Media” tab to this blog for anyone interested in joining in on the Twitter conversation on gifted education. It’s really quite easy to get started and I have provided a simple guide along with the @ names of people who regularly post on gifted education issues. See you there!

Prufrock Press Podcasts

2009 September 17
by Jeanne Bernish

Ahhh – I love alliteration!  And I am particularly pleased when pondering podcasts on the precocious.  So here’s a link to Prufrock Press Podcasts on gifted children – and you can easily add them to your iTunes list for listening in the car or on the treadmill! And thanks to @teachagiftedkid for adding the link to Twitter!