Today we were looking at the Gifted and Talented register. Angi delivered a paper she’d written for Uni back last year. The presentation can be found on slideshare, unfortunately I’m having a few issues with embedding in my blog so you’re left with a screen capture and the link to the slideshow, Sorry.
I’ve managed to grasp some key aspects.
Our school definition reads:
Gifted and talented students are those who have potential (gifted) or are Performing (talented) well above average in any of the following domains: general intellectual or social, specific academic, cultural traditions, values or ethics creative or productive thinking, leadership visual or performing arts, and psychomotor ability.
There is huge provision for ‘special needs’ kids with SEA, JOST, ‘Seeds for success’, hearing and vision screening, NUMPA, ESOL assessment and Ministry cohorts English Language Assessment.So why not identify those with special abilities? Those with ‘special abilities’ need appropriate learning experiences, lest we are in danger of switching them off and ‘giving’ them behaviour issues, or worse, they’ll be labelled the class know-all. They need the challenge, but what does that look like in our classes?
A little bit of theory:
Conservative definitions of giftedness are the traditionally recognised ones. They tend to focus on one area – usually academic intelligence – and base their identification on high IQ scores. Some of the supporters of these conservative definitions were the early theorists, Alfred Binet and Théophile Simon devised the Binet-Simon Scale, which measured the mental age as opposed to the chronological age.
Liberal definitions are much broader in their base and therefore a lot more inclusive. They allow for a much higher percentage of students to be labelled as gifted or having special abilities.Among others, there are three key people who have contributed to current thinking on liberal definitions of giftedness: Renzulli, Gardner and Gagné. Joseph Renzulli(1978) is one person who led the way in the area of using a multicategorical approach to giftedness. He included three key components to his model of giftedness:
• Above average ability (as opposed to high IQ)
• Task commitment
• Creativity
Often a trait of ‘gifted’ children is their isolation within there peer group. Often they are ‘loners’ and require What impact does economical background play on the gifted and talented?
What about Maori andPacific Island children? Within their culture ‘gifted and talented’ looks very different to our white-middle class background.
‘Dyssynchrony’ is a term coined by Gibello (1976) when intellectual skills develop a lot quicker than affective and motor development. In other words, there is internal and external unevenness in development with corresponding consequences. Following are some examples of kinds of dyssynchrony evident in gifted children.
Intellectual-Psychomotor DyssynchronyAs the name suggests, this is when the intellectual development surpasses the physical/motor development, causing an imbalance between the two. An example of this is a child who reads fluently before starting school but has problems with handwriting, or has difficulty co-ordinating their writing with the speed that their brain is thinking. This is more common with boys than girls.
Language-Reasoning DyssynchronySometimes what can happen with gifted children is that their powers of reasoning are in advance of their language ability. Their thinking abilities exceed their knowledge. They may be able to understand something without being able to explain it.
Intellectual-Affective dyssynchronyIntelligence may mask emotional immaturity at times. ‘Too much information’ can in turn cause anxiety and fears when the child is unable to process that information appropriately.
Some cool examples:
• Einstein was four years old before he could speak and seven before he could read.
• Isaac Newton did poorly in grade school.
• When Thomas Edison was a boy, his teachers told him he was too stupid to learn anything.
• A newspaper editor fired Walt Disney because he had ‘no good ideas’.
.• Abraham Lincoln entered the Black Hawk War as a captain and came out as a private.
• Winston Churchill failed the 6th grade.Back to my school.
The gifted and talented register is split into these key areas:
- Motivation
- Problem-solving
- Interests
- Reasoning
- Communication Skills
- Intensity
- Memory
- Insight
- Cultural
- Inquiry/Curiosity
- Humour
- Sporting
- Imagination/Creativity
- And Sensitivity
What I would love to here about is what does your school do to provide for the needs of the gifted and talented?
If you know of any Web2.0 tools that could be used to address some of these areas please let me know.
Also please feel free to comment about the whole nature of ‘gifted and talented’, I am just learning about it and would really appreciate a broader perspective on this subject.
If these kids were in my class which do I need to encourage, which
do I need to push to reach their full potential, which should I report to CYF or to the RTLB service. Who is performing, whose average, whose just not up to schooling. What should I say to their parents?
How do we know, who we know? Our classrooms are full of potential, of greatness. If these
kids
WERE in my class, how much responsibility do I take for them, and for how long?
