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.
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
