SPED+5030+Choice+Online+Module

=//Choice Online Module - Gifted and Talented//=

//By Antonio Ortiz and Andrew Toig//
__TeacherTube Video “Identification of Gifted and Talented”__ http://teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=124092&title=Identification_of_Gifted_and_Talented__ - In 1972, the Marland Report included the intelligence test as one of the areas of demonstrated achievement or potential in gifted - Six areas of giftedness identified in the Marland Report (Public Law 91-230, Section 806) were: Intellectual Ability, Specific Academic Aptitude, Creative/Productive Thinking, Leadership Ability, Visual/Performing Arts, and Psychomotor Ability - The Marland Report said gifted students made up 5% of the population - At the turn of the century, Lewis Terman attempted to identify the gifted using new intelligence tests, teacher identification, recommendations from community members - In 1988, the Javits Gifted and Talented Education Act was introduced to provide funding to those who were willing to incorporate new identification criteria - So, a gifted person shows or has potential to show an exceptional level of performance in one or more areas of expression - “Gifted” is different in every state - Dimensions: A) Aptitude (reasoning ability); B) Achievement (reading/mathematics); C) Performance (intellectual/academic) - Project STAR: Student Tasks Assessments and Rubrics; includes verbal and non-verbal criteria for the “gifted” label

__Article, “What is Giftedness?” (Sliverman, 2007)__ - With most of her work being with parents, Silverman found that mothers and fathers viewed giftedness differently - Men tend to equate giftedness with achievement, while women perceive it as “developmental advancement” - Developing faster than other children makes a child vulnerable, and mothers are usually aware of this - “When we equate giftedness with achievement in school, or with the potential for noteworthy achievement in adult life, we create an inequitable criterion for children of color, children who are economically disadvantaged, and females” (p. 1). <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">- The vast majority of gifted children actually come from the lower classes <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">- Abolishing programs for the gifted in public schools hurts the gifted poor, because the rich can afford private education <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">- So what is giftedness? It is developmental advancement that can be observed in early childhood. The child does not, however, advance equally in all areas. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">- gifted students sometimes have trouble fitting in, and sometimes act out when they aren’t sufficiently challenged

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">__Colorado Department of Education Gifted and Talented education section__ <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">www.cde.state.co.us/gt <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">- "Gifted and talented” means those persons between the ages of five and twenty-one whose abilities, talents, and potential for accomplishment are so exceptional or developmentally advanced that they require special provisions to meet their educational programming needs. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">- Gifted students include students with disabilities, known as “twice exceptional,” and students from all socioeconomic, ethnic/cultural populations with exceptional abilities or potential <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">- CDE uses the same six areas of giftedness as the TeacherTube video, but combine the last two to make five areas: Intellectual Ability; Specific Academic Aptitude; Creative/Productive Thinking; Leadership Ability; and Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Musical, or Psychomotor Ability.

__<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Video, Annenberg foundation, “Asking Questions,” 2001 __ @http://www.learner.org/libraries/makingmeaning/makingmeaning/asking/?pop=yes&pid=1821 <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In this video, a teacher, Ms. Hernandez uses a relevant and accessible text as a building block. Because it is easily accessible to the students, it serves as an easy scaffold to get the students to think more deeply, not only about the text, but about how issues affect their lives. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">- Asking questions to guide students through the text and get into the characters’ heads. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">- At the beginning of the lesson, the teacher is the one asking the questions. She uses the questions to guide the discussion, which serves as a review of the reading. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">- Through the discussion, the teacher attempts not to have the students find specific answers to the questions; more important is allowing the students to live out the situation with the characters, to develop the ability to think empathetically. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">- Reading the text aloud gives the students the opportunity to ask questions of the text. This allows students to be open to other possibilities of interpreting the text in addition to their initial impressions. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">- Teacher encourages the students to picture themselves in the situation of the character, discuss what they would do in that situation, and justify their answers. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">- This questioning strategy is designed to develop reading fluency. A fluent reader will constantly question the text; the teacher is constantly modeling this strategy. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">- Teacher purposefully elicits questions from the entire class. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">- Teacher uses the text to have students think through “the larger questions in life” <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> - e.g. Do people plan to drink and drive? <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> - Students answer each other’s questions to foster discussion

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Goal of the teacher’s lesson is that the students transfer the lessons from the text to their own lives. She hopes to achieve this transfer by constantly challenging the students to place themselves in the characters' position and explain what they would do in the same situation.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Teacher has noticed that the students always look to her for approval. Her goal is to get the students to the point where they feel confident in themselves and don’t need her affirmation.

__<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Gifted Child Today (2009). 32(3). __ <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In keeping with the Colorado Growth Model (CGM), it is essential that all students be encouraged to improve, regardless of what their scores are. Although focus is rightly placed on students who are under-performing, ignoring students who outperform their peers will likely cause their learning to stagnate, and may even cause educational problems for these students. Studies have shown that when gifted students are ignored by the educational system, their performance tends to fall as they get older. Strategies such as RtI, which is meant to apply to all learners, can be valuable for gifted and talented students, but only if these children are specifically advocated for by adults. If no one advocates for these children, they often get overlooked in the push to bring up the scores of lower-performing students. In a similar manner to how RtI functions for under-performing students, children who test in the top percentiles can benefit from an RtI that provides them with additional challenges. However, in order for testing to effectively identify these students, a higher ceiling than the grade level standard must be adopted. The article advocates using universal testing to determine which students are performing under a certain criteria, and those who are performing above a different criteria. As such, students can identify the two extremes in student ability levels, and focus on them. Students who are performing at either extreme must have off grade-level testing to determine the level at which they are actually performing. The goal is to is determine the appropriate instructional intervention for every child—a goal for the changing educational landscape.

__<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">National Society for the Gifted and Talented (NSGT) __ <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In the United States, the recognition of and support for gifted and talented students has been and continues to decline. The abilities of students with great potential are being undermined by a general ambivalence in U.S. society towards high academic and artistic achievement. There are currently about 3 million gifted and talented children in grades K-12 in the United States, however only about one fourth of them have been identified and receive support. The NSGT is a non-profit organization dedicated to honoring and encouraging gifted and talented children and youth. It does this by honoring their significant achievements, and providing access to resources and advanced learning directly related to their interests and areas of talent. The goal of the NSGT is to provide a structure where G&T children and youth are identified, and can expect to find information and opportunities that directly relate to, and cultivate, their abilities and desires to achieve at a high level. NSGT collaborates closely with other gifted and talented program providers, school districts, colleges and universities, community programs, and corporations, and all other stake-holders.

The Society's Mission : <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The National Society for the Gifted & Talented™ is committed to celebrate and advance the academic, creative, and leadership abilities and potential of gifted and talented students. We will build meaningful relationships with our members and stakeholders to ensure that each student has an information base to explore opportunities that can extend their talents with like-minded peers and professionals.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">NSGT provides a variety of resources for people interested in the education of G&T students <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">@http://www.nsgt.org/resources/index.asp

__Connections__ I thought this information about gifted and talented students was interesting because it wasn't what I expected to learn. For example, I didn't know that the recognition and support of G&T students was declining, however, I suppose with more standardized testing and NCLB policies in place, it's inevitable that the unique needs of G&T students will get brushed aside. Also interesting is that many gifted students have trouble fitting in socially. At DCIS, I have not heard or seen specific programs, adjustments, actions, etc. for gifted students, although I'm sure at least a small percentage of students there are gifted in one of the five ways (as categorized by CDE). I do notice a few high-achieving students being left out, or seeming uncomfortable with their peers, but I can't say if it is because of them being gifted or for other reasons. I will do some exploring and asking around at DCIS to find out more. I myself was considered gifted during school, but I always refused the offer to be placed in special after-school programs or groups. Perhaps, thinking back, this was because I didn't want to become alienated from my group of friends. I specifically remember the first group I was asked to join in elementary school. The teachers in the room told us we were gifted and then I remember being assigned lots of extra reading. Well, at that time I'd rather spend my time playing sports outside, so I didn't accept the offer to join that group. It's just interesting that these readings and videos sparked that memory for me. As a teacher, and after knowing a bit more about differentiation for special populations (my co-teaching lesson with Andy) based on Heacox (2002), I will ensure that I know all of my students' needs. It's essential to be in regular communication with special educators, parents, administrators, and the students themselves to learn more about unique needs and ways to meet those needs. Gifted and Talented students may need modifications to the curriculum, such as an accelerated pace of learning, opportunities to delve deeper into subjects, eliminating material they already understand, replacing said material with more challenging material, and so on.