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Articles from
November 2008
Amazing Accomplishments of Gifted Science Students
If you want to be wowed by the capabilities of highly gifted, highly motivated middle school, high school, and college students, take a look at
News & Views—Young Scientists on the Cogito Web site. These young people are incredible!
Cogito has gathered information on winners of science awards from all over the world, including Davidson Fellows, Global Challenge Awards, Intel International Science & Engineering Fair, Fields Medal, Siemens Westinghouse Competition, USA Computing Olympiad, and more. In addition to competition winners, many more students are presented who are working on very advanced science projects. These are projects that one would expect from only established research scientists. As of this writing, there are 155 articles on the Web site about these young science students. Some examples are
- Daniel Burd, who found a way to reduce the time it takes a plastic bag to decompose from 20 or more years to just three months.
- Tara Adiseshan, who is investigating a cure for endangered amphibians.
- Ahana Datta, who devised a plan to apply nanotechnology to making catalytic converters.
- Anshul Samar, who created a chemistry game and a company to produce and market the game.
- Tiffany Dinkins, who spent a summer working to uncover the mysteries of how genes affect brain function.
- Kayson Conlin, who is working on an electromagnetic invisibility cloak for buildings and vehicles that can be turned off and on at will.
Ability Grouping for Gifted Children (Podcast)
This blog features a new media format. I'm experimenting with podcasting as a way to share information here on the blog.
I wanted a way that I could bring my readers some short, focused interviews about topics important to gifted education.
Simply click on one of the links at the bottom of this entry to listen to the podcast (use the latter link if you have iTunes installed on your computer).
Today's topic is one that impacts gifted kids in schools on a regular basis. In the past, gifted children often were placed into special gifted classes or accelerated learning groups. The thinking went that gifted children learned at a faster pace than other kids, and if you could group gifted children together it was easier for those students and their teachers to move at a faster pace through the class' subject matter.
However, the practice of grouping students by ability has become a controversial topic in many schools. As a result, during the last few years we have seen the dismantling of special gifted classes. We've seen teachers move away from the use of ability groups in their classrooms.
How are gifted students affected by this change and does it make sense to move away from ability grouping?
To answer these questions, I've invited Todd Kettler to join me in discussing this topic. Todd is the director of Advanced Academic Services at Coppell ISD (Coppell, TX), a district outside of Dallas. Todd is on the editorial advisory board for the Journal of Advanced Academics and is the chairperson of the Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented's Research and Evaluation Committee.
Todd makes reference to the research supporting ability grouping in his interview. For more information on this topic, there are two excellent resources:
Listen to the Podcast
Click here to listen to the podcast
(approximate length: 25 minutes)
Click here to listen to or subscribe* to this podcast in iTunes
(requires that you have iTunes installed on your computer)
* If you wish to be receive notifications when new podcasts are posted, you need to subscribe to Prufrock's "Gifted Education Podcast" in iTunes or subscribe to the "Podcasts" RSS feed in the left column of this blog (see "Categories/RSS"). Click here to read instructions on using RSS feeds.
Gifted Education Forums
Do you ever have specific questions about gifted education, but you don’t know where to turn? Do you want to know what gifted education issues are being discussed by others but don’t want to join a listserv that might flood your email box? An Internet forum might be just what you need. An Internet forum is an online discussion site where you can ask questions and get answers or you can just observe the questions and answers of others.
There are a number of forums dedicated to gifted education. Here are a few, along with some recent topics of discussion.
Preschool
Home—incredibly bright/School—lazy
Music and learning
How gifted-friendly is your state?
Exploring fine art with children
Radical acceleration and early college
Gifted Education 2.0
Book recommendations for gifted readers grades 4–6
Information on upcoming conferences
Recommendations for online GT endorsement programs
Parenting and advocacy
Identification, testing, and assessment
Grade skipping
Gifted - OGTOC
When to seek professional help
Enrichment
No Child Left Behind Act
Early entry to kindergarten policies
Web-based math programs
Compacting/Learning Contract Advice
Encouraging Gifted Students to Be Innovators
Is innovation dead? Are we encouraging our young people to be creative innovators?
In a podcast titled
Tough Economy Doesn't Help U.S. 'Innovation Gap', author Judy Estrin is interviewed about her new book
Closing the Innovation Gap: Reigniting the Spark of Creativity in a Global Economy. Estrin wants to encourage the renewal of innovation in America, closing the gap between where we used to be and where we are now, and between where we are now and where we could be in the future. She believes that this key trait has been stifled by the school system, by an emphasis in society on efficiency, and by the use of threats in our country to scare people rather than inspire them.
The author states that certain core values are needed to foster deep innovation. These core values include
Estrin feels that our current educational system is set up to produce people who test well. What we really need is for people to ask questions, not just answer them. The way in which many of us currently teach and parent kids stifles the core values listed above and, therefore, stifles innovation. We can influence the educational system by working with certain nonprofits, electing officials who promote innovation, and encouraging the respect of science in society.
As parents, we should encourage kids to explore, think, and ask questions. We should also really listen to children and engage them in critical thinking discussions. One organization that Estrin believes is helpful is
Sally Ride Science.
For related blog entries on this topic, search (upper right corner of this page) on Creativity, Questioning, and/or Critical Thinking. While Estrin focuses her discussion primarily on science and technology, innovation, creativity, and critical thinking are needed across all disciplines.
Exciting Reading Program that Challenges Gifted Learners
I'm very pleased to announce our newly released Jacob's Ladder Reading Comprehension Program.
We just got back from exhibiting at the annual conference of the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC). We took plenty of these books to display and sell at the conference, and we sold out on the second day!
I heard from so many people at the conference that they are looking for a field-tested reading program that works with kids of all ability levels--including gifted children. When field-testing this program, the staff at The College of William and Mary's Center for Gifted Education found solid achievement gains among mid-level and struggling students. The key difference between this product and others is that it also showed solid gains among gifted students. So many other programs really are geared to only address the needs of struggling students. This program offer a great tool for teachers in mixed-ability and gifted classrooms.
I've created a combination pack that allows you to buy the entire series at a savings ($109.95 for the complete set).
Developed by the Center for Gifted Education at The College of William and Mary, the Jacob's Ladder Reading Comprehension Program targets reading comprehension skills in learners by moving students through an inquiry process from basic understanding to critical analyses of texts. Students in grades 2–8 will learn to comprehend and analyze any reading passage after completing the activities in these books.
In the form of three skill ladders connected to individual readings in poetry, short stories, and nonfiction, students move from lower order, concrete thinking skills to higher order, critical thinking skills. Each book, geared to increasing grade levels, includes high-interest readings, ladders to increase reading skill development, and easy-to-implement instruction. The ladders include multiple skills necessary for academic success, covering language arts standards, such as sequencing, cause and effect, classification, making generalizations, inference, and recognizing themes and concepts.
To read more about this exciting new reading program visit the Jacob's Ladder Reading Comprehension Program product page on the Prufrock Web site.
A Different Way of Looking at Boredom of the Gifted
When someone is bored, they don’t like what they’re doing, but don’t know what else to do.
I can remember that when I was a young child, I often sat around the house saying, “I’m bored.”
With a little smile on his face, my father’s consistent reply was, “Carol, you’re always bored.”
There was nothing I felt like doing at the time. No one ever felt sorry for me, though, and no one ever tried to rescue me from my boredom. Each member of the family went about his or her business and did not consider it their responsibility to entertain me. There was plenty I could do if I chose to take on the task.
Today’s parents and teachers often feel that their kids must be engaged at all times. But by rescuing young people from their boredom every time it pokes its head above the surface, we may be denying them the chance to figure out their own boredom-relieving tactics.
Children need to understand that life isn’t always fun, that everyone gets bored occasionally—or dislikes the task at hand—and we all have to do things that we’d rather not.
Perhaps it would be interesting to create a regular discussion group around the subject of boredom to help kids better understand it. Some possible activities follow:
- Have students articulate their own feelings about boredom. What does it mean? Are they ever bored? If so, when? How do they handle it? Are there other ways they can handle boredom?
- Find out how others have handled boredom. How do characters in the books they read address the subject? What about people who lived in other times?
- Have students interview family and friends and ask them how they handle boring times. What are the similarities and differences?
- Have students do the activities in the lesson plan, How Did Civil War Soldiers Battle Boredom? Students are asked to make a Venn diagram comparing things they do to combat boredom with the activities Civil War soldiers did to do the same.
- Create a list of all the things one could do when bored in school or at home. Allow kids to be very creative with this.