Sage Advice: Challenging and Motivating Gifted Students
How do you challenge and motivate gifted students?
I design assignments that allow students to utilize a variety of skills, intelligences, and hobbies.This puts some responsibility on those gifted students to choose something that will challenge them; it also increases motivation. More importantly, such assignments broaden the concept of giftedness itself. Assignments that allow students to choose how they demonstrate understanding help both students and teachers break away from the idea that the only useful intelligences are rooted in ELA or math abilities.
Jeff Campbell
Special educatorSouth High School
Worchester, Massachusetts
By having them help us teach.
Dan Condon
Acting director
Professional Development Center
Eagle Rock School
Estes Park, Colorado
I have honors students read an article that would confound a graduate student, and write a "difficulty report" that explores the challenges the reading assignment posed. I also say, "Good job" when students say, "I don't understand" in class, instead of pretending they already know it all. This rewards honesty, encourages further research and selfdirected learning, and discourages passive overconfidence.
Dr. Michael Arnzen
Assistant professor of English
Seton Hill University
Greensburg, Pennsylvania
Practice good classroom-management techniques. The most motivating concern is to give interested students the time and space to create their projects. Keeping a talent-varied classroom under control is one of the most important concerns a teacher should have. Silence for uninterrupted brainstorming sessions or reading or tasking is of utmost significance. Quiet time and creative, motivating pursuits are the best gifts a good instructor can give a gifted student.
Robert Miller
Certified K-12 teacher
Marin School of Arts and Technology
Marin County, California
I find these students to be generally disillusioned with the rigid, controlling conformity of school, since their own mental capabilities prevent them from becoming another cookie that's been cut. They need choice and real-world applications, and they thrive on real-life situations in which creativity and innovation are truly welcome.
Oh, wait, my mistake: All kids need this. Maybe then we'd see that they all have gifts.
Melissa Sgroi
Educator/journalist
King's College
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
Allow students to identify and implement an individual education plan. My son and I worked together to identify his areas of interest as well as areas he needed to develop. We then identified opportunities available during and outside school (for example, distance education courses from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth). He is more motivated because he helped develop his own education plan.
Donna Wells
Newbury Park, California
To motivate my gifted students in communications class, I have them enter writing contests from magazines published by Scholastic and Teen Ink. In addition, I publish their writing online at Iuniverse.com.
Patricia Fuhrman
Communications teacher
John F. Kennedy High School
Mt. Angel, Oregon
- Give them a meaningful problem to solve.
- Make problem-solving tools available.
- Stay in the room but out of their way.
Step 1 is the most important, step 2 is easy, and step 3 is the hardest.
Bob Marner
Technical training coordinator
National University
San Diego, California
I incorporate Robolab software and Lego Mindstorms into the curriculum. Students choose or are given a challenge, plan and build a robotic solution, write and download a computer program, and test their robot. The fifth-grade level is often the first time they experience trial and error. They learn to discuss the situation with other students and work together in groups to solve problems, finding that they can benefit and learn from working with other students, even if those students are not gifted, too.
Kathleen Crowe
Integration lead teacher (STEM)
Pflugerville Independent School District
Pflugerville, Texas
Intrinsic motivation is a much greater tool than any extrinsic motivator. Find out what students are passionate about and tie compulsory components to it in some way. The students will enjoy the learning process and astound you with what they can do.
Mechel Wall
President
Benton County Charter School Organization, Inc.
Rogers, Arkansas
I created a Web site (myschoolonline.com/nh/mrs5st) with interactive activities for my students to use when they finished their classwork. For example, I had an interactive link about types of machines in which they clicked on items in a room, such as a doorknob, and described what type of machine it is. At home, they made compound machines out of two or more simple machines, then demonstrated to the class which simple machines were used.
Wendy Tetrault
Certified K-8 teacher/substitute teacher
Shaker Regional School District
Belmont, New Hampshire
In our school's Independent Study Mentorship program, selected students are allowed to study, in depth, any topic of their choosing for one semester. They work closely and frequently with a mentor from the community.
By the end of the semester, students are expected to have created a college- or professional-level product and to present it to a real-world audience.
Kathleen Gandin
ISM teacher-facilitator
Clear Creek High School
League City, Texas
I am challenging my higher-level eighth-grade science students to choose a topic we have not studied that they would like to teach their classmates about.Their presentations must be eight to ten minutes long and must include either videotape or digital pictures.They must also interview a professional about their topic. So far, subjects have ranged from horse breeding to diabetes. I get to see what they like and learn something, too!
US History 8th grade
This year with the motivation and guidance of our tech teacher we implemented problem/project based learning. We posed several hook questions/essential questions and took a look at race, gender and religios bias in america. Students were posed with a problem but to solve it they were free to use thier unique skills. As a teacher I saw students show great abilities and skills I had not noted...we looked at statistical data, video, made PSA Public announcement and posted may on you-tube and facebook, posted on blogs....took survey and interpreted dataon the bais of thier raw data...
I guess the key was the students saw me and my tech co teacher excited, learning with them, motivated...we as eduvators must innovate and hence students will
Motivate and Challenge Gifted Students
I create a solid rapport with each gifted student (as I try to do with all my students), tap into his/her interest, listen and respect his/her ideas, and provide choice in the product, process, or content of the lesson or project so student ownership of and responsibility for learning occurs.
Laura Tolone
Carol Morgan School
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Sage Advice
I create a solid rapport with each gifted student (as I try to do with each of my students), tap into his/her interests, listen and respect his/her ideas, and provide choice in the product, process, or content of the lesson or project so student ownership of and responsibility for learning occurs. When I was a first grade teacher, I provided students with the choice of product when completing research tasks ensuring each choice involved a different group of multiple intelligences.
Laura Tolone
Library Director
Carol Morgan School
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
I have been teaching for the past 10 years and am aware of how difficult differentiation can be. Providing opportunities for all of my students varying ability levels is a very daunting task. I often find I am spending time helping those students who are bellow the level expected and forget how important it is to work with those students who are above it. I really appreciate what Donna Wells mentioned above. Finding out what each of my students gifted areas are, or determining what they excel in and attempting to find them an extra curricular outlet to help motivate them seems like a great way to balance a few of my many responsibilities.
Elementary
I challenge learners to apply creative and innovative thinking in group situations by using "Odyssey of the Mind" type hands on problems once a week in class, I call it "Creative Problem Solving". The teams work together using a given set of materials to build something that performs a certain function or meets a set of criteria. The teams are rewarded for creative and innovative ideas, not only if their solution works and they self-evaluate their thinking using a rubric.
The challenges facing public education today are at least as formidable as they have ever been, and the expectations we hold for educators may be even higher. Moreover, the stakes are probably higher as well, because the consequences of failure in our education system are likely to be not just personal and local, but national and even global. As knowledge and technology continue to expand explosively in quantity and complexity and as our children and youths face ever more difficult personal, career, and social challenges, the burden we expect education to bear only continues to increase. We must recognize the importance.
1. Challenging Activity Books for Teaching Gifted Children
2.assess their own interests and learning styles, and write personal goals ... Locate resources in the school and community that can help foster the student's talents
3. Progress process.
These include:
· Brainstorming
· Webbing
· Decision Making
· Questioning
· Creative Problem Solving
· Planning
What Families Can Do at Home?
Children's talents should be developed as early as possible so they can achieve their full potential. Parents don't need to be very educated themselves--or have a great deal of money, or even time--to help their children learn and improve their ability to think and communicate. Here are some things to do at home:
What Programs Are Most Successful with Gifted Multicultural Students:
Children with many different learning styles, educational backgrounds, and academic and social skills participate in programs for especially talented students. The following curriculum and teaching strategies are especially effective in multicultural gifted programs. Parents can work with schools to make sure that their children's education.
Motivating Gifted Students
I believe we have to discover what are gifted students are passionate about so we can provide them with the opportunities they need to succeed, and we should allow them to choose the way they want to present their work so their talents as be best displayed.
5th grade
I firmly believe that a teacher's first priority must be to inspire her students to use their indivisual talents in the learning community. This can be done by first finding out what your students' interests and talents are and then, designing engaging lessons which will enable each student to have a choice in how to present the new acquired knowledge. Putting together class project groups with students of varied talents and interests will give each student an opportunity to contribute and at the same time, develop the much coveted "gifted behavior" or "giftedness".
I try to consistently provide students that work beyond the norm of the class with challenges and hope it serves as a source of motivation. Unfortunately I don't feel that I am doing enough as their teacher to provide the challenges and motivations that makes a difference in the students educational experience. Many other “things” seem to “get in the way” of the time, resources and even my own personal motivation for providing these students with a minimum “extra”. Until this year, although I still need to work on the amount and quality of the tools that I am using, one of the brightest students that I have ever taught (in the area of math) and I have developed a dialogue, almost like our own lingo, that occurs spontaneous at times. This discussion that we get into, at times in the middle of the lesson, not only motivates and captures the attention of the other 20 students but I can literally see an aura shine around him when he gets to discuss, formulate and debate his theories, unfortunately an opportunity that he has not been given until now.
Yvonne D
Buff State in DR
There is a new website called Smarttrix.com and they have puzzles each month that are quite difficult. This seems like the kind of out of the box thinking that would be great for challenging young gifted minds.