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Articles from
September 2005
Word Enrichment for Gifted Kids
There are so many ways to enrich vocabulary and word usage at home. These should be fun and challenging activities for everyone.
Begin reading out loud to children at an early age, and don’t stop as the kids develop their own reading skills. Shared reading is beneficial into the teenage years and beyond. In addition to reading aloud, share with one another the interesting parts of books that each member of the family reads. Excitement about reading is contagious.
Use big words at the dinner table. Don’t talk down to children. It is only by hearing big words that they become familiar. Young people will figure out the meanings of many words through context. They can ask you about the meanings of the ones they don’t understand.
Play family word games together like Scrabble, Boggle, and UpWords. Crossword puzzles and other word puzzles are also fun to do together. They also increase vocabulary and help one to look at words in unusual ways. Inexpensive word puzzle books are available in the magazine sections of grocery stores and drug stores.
Interactive computer word games can be found at
Fun and Quick Public Speaking Activities
Guest Post by:
Katherine Pebley O'Neal
It's no secret that public speaking can be a a nerve racking experience for kids unaccustomed to making an oral presentation. However, with a couple of fun, low-anxiety activities your students can build confidence and reduce their anxieties about public speaking.
Here are two easy ways to introduce public speaking techniques in your classroom. The first is an activity I call "Letter Lecture." Have your students take turns "lecturing" the class by reciting the alphabet or counting to fifty. Without having to think about what they are saying, the students can concentrate on making eye contact, gesturing for emphasis, and moving around the room. Give them the goals of putting different inflections on the letters or numbers, as though they are really saying something, and of meeting each classmate's eyes at least once. As an extended challenge, have them add an opening or closing of their own creation. The "lecture" might go like this:
"Welcome, and thank you for coming to this presentation. A, BCD! E, F, G, H? I, JKL- M. NOP! Q, R, S, T, UVW? X. Y, Z? Thank you so much for your attention. Are there any questions?"
A second public speaking idea is to have your students chose from a list of imaginary creatures you have made up and put on note cards. Put a quick list of questions on the board:
- What does it look like (size, teeth, fur, scales, nose, claws, color, tail, etc)?
- Is it a mammal, reptile, amphibian, marsupial?
- What does it eat? What eats it?
- What kind of habitat does it live in?
- Does it make a sound?
- What survival characteristics does it have (flies, swims, runs, digs, camouflages, fights, etc.)
Give your students about ten minutes to make up the descriptions of their imaginary animals using your questions as a guideline, and then have them present their short reports on these creatures. The goals should be eye contact, clear speech, and confidence (content isn't important since they are the only "experts" on their subjects!). If you have extra time, they can make a picture or diagram to use as a visual aid.
If you are interested in giving your students more tools for successful public speaking, try Public Speaking: A Student Guide to Writing and Delivering a Great Speech a handy resource from Prufrock Press that explains how to write and deliver an outstanding speech in seven easy steps, written by Katherine Pebley O'Neal (that's me!) or try Speakers' Club: Public Speaking for Young People, a Toastmaster's style curriculum, also from Prufrock Press.
About this Blog Entry's Guest Author
Katherine Pebley O'Neal is a fifth grade teacher who believes that any written report deserves to become a dynamic oral presentation. She holds a master's degree in education from The Colorado College. She is the author of Prufrock's popular public speaking book, Public Speaking: A Student Guide to Writing and Delivering a Great Speech, and she is the author of four books in Simon & Schuster's The Stink Squad series. Look for short stories from Katherine Pebley O'Neal in lots of magazines for young people, and a new series of family picture books, available in 2006 from Zonderkidz, HarperCollins.
All Parents Homeschool
On one of the many listservs to which I belong, a contributor recently stated that all parents homeschool their children to some extent. It is all on a continuum, with some families deciding to make the commitment to homeschool their children fulltime and some providing aspects of homeschooling without even realizing they are doing so. After all, homeschooling is simply the provision of educational opportunities that may not be available in the regular school system.
Even if you don’t homeschool your children fulltime, you may want to look at Internet Resources for Homeschooling Gifted Students for ideas to incorporate into your own family’s situation. Schools cannot possibly provide a complete education for your young people; no one entity can. One’s education comes from a total experience of formal schooling, plus all experiences outside of school. You are homeschooling your children when you take them to the library, to cultural events, to museums, and on trips to areas outside their neighborhoods. You are homeschooling when you read to them, discuss with them, and encourage their hobbies. You are homeschooling when you enroll them in music lessons or send them to camp. Enjoy your homeschooling experience whether it is part-time or fulltime.
Questioning for Gifted Students
One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.
Parents often ask how they can enhance the education of their students at home. Teachers often ask how they can help gifted students in the classroom. Teaching children good questioning techniques is one of the many ways to address these dilemmas.
When children first start school, adults ask the questions and pose problems. Over time, we want to shift to students asking questions and finding problems for themselves. Questions should also become more complex as young people grow. “What evidence do you have...?” or “How do you know that’s true?” or “What do you think would happen if…?” or “If that is true, then what might happen if...?”
Children should look at their environment and inquire. “Why do frogs croak?” “How high can a bird fly?” “What use is the hair on my arms?” “How can we stem pollution?”
When going out on an errand or a vacation or a field trip together, query young people with “What questions will you ask yourself?” “What do you wonder about?” “What more could you learn about...?”
On August 26, I posted a blog entry titled Critical Thinking for Gifted Students. In that entry, I talked about some techniques that adults can use when questioning gifted students. By modeling these methods, young people will soon start using some of the same techniques.
Parents can always modify classroom suggestions for use at home. Never feel that it is just the school's responsibility to teach children. Parents play the major role in developing the minds of young people.
Parents and teachers are invited to post ways that they encourage young people to ask good questions. Just click on the “Add Comment” section below this blog entry. Also, feel free to post some of the interesting questions your students have asked.
$10,000 Grants for Science Teachers
Science teachers can apply for a 2006 Toyota TAPESTRY grant and receive up to $10,000. Each year Toyota partners with the National Science Teachers Association to fund the Toyota TAPESTRY program, the largest K-12 science teacher grant program in the nation. Grants worth up to $10,000 are given to those teachers who make science come alive with their creativity and vision.
Open to K-12 teachers of science residing in the United States or U.S. territories or possessions. All middle and high school science teachers and elementary teachers who teach some science in the classroom are eligible.
Proposals must describe a project including its potential impact on students, and a budget up to $10,000 (up to $2,500 for mini-grants). Toyota TAPESTRY grants are awarded in three categories:
- Environmental Science Education
- Physical Science Applications
- Literacy and Science Education
For more information, visit the National Science Teachers Association's TAPESTRY web site.
If you would like to discover other exciting ways to raise money for your classroom, consider Prufrock's soon to be released, Frances A. Karnes, Ph.D. and Kristen R. Stephens, Ph.D., offer a step-by-step guide to grant writing; fun, success-proven fund-raising ideas; and a practical how-to for long-term fund development.
Foreign Languages for Gifted Children--Begin Early
Some time ago, I had an opportunity to visit an American family who was living and working in a remote area of Ecuador. I was very impressed with their five-year-old daughter who spoke three languages fluently: English, Spanish, and Quechua. No one had made an effort to teach her these languages, but because she was exposed to each on a daily basis, she picked them up on her own. She moved with ease between the languages, quickly ascertaining who would understand which. She was more fluent than her parents in Quechua, the indigenous language of the Andean region.
In Foreign Languages No Longer Just for Big Kids, Susan Curtiss, a UCLA professor of linguistics, states, "There's something very special about the brain and mind during early life that makes it exactly ripe for developing language." Studies have shown that children who begin learning a second language early in life gain a more native-sounding pronunciation, better overall grammar skills, and other benefits.
Spanish remains the dominant foreign language in schools, reflecting in part a trend in U.S. demographics. Hispanics are now the country's largest minority, and the number of children who speak a language other than English at home has more than doubled since 2003.
- It enables students to develop a greater proficiency in foreign language as they have more years to develop skills.
- Children develop global attitudes through intercultural awareness.
- Foreign language study becomes the catalyst for cognitive and psychological development.
- Exposure to two languages at an early age helps children to be more flexible and creative.
- There is evidence that foreign languages have positive effects on memory and listening skills.
- Language learning skills transfer from one language learning experience to another. Knowledge of one foreign language facilitates the study of a second foreign language.
If education is a means by which to prepare children for the complicated world that they inhabit, to give them tools with which to understand new challenges, then the educational system should offer an expansive foreign language curriculum as early as possible.
If parents and teachers wish to start a foreign language program in their school, they will benefit from consulting Guidelines for Starting an Elementary School Foreign Language Program, by Marcia Rosenbusch, National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center. In this article, the author lists reasons why some foreign language programs failed in the 1950s and 1960s and what should be done to assure that a newly started school program will succeed.
Universal Themes & Gifted Education
My dad had a wonderful way of explaining things. Because he was a doctor, he often needed to describe how the parts of the body worked and what happened when those parts did not work properly. Frequently he compared the systems of the body to common machinery or household systems. He helped his patients understand their illnesses by making connections to objects and experiences that were already familiar to them.
Our children and students also learn best when they relate new information to things and ideas that are familiar. We can help them with this by teaching universal themes/concepts. By using this technique, we also help students to form “big ideas” that are transferred to future experiences. Gifted students are capable of taking these big ideas in-depth and becoming quite complex with them. This can actually be used as a differentiation tool.
- Rather than have kids just memorize math facts, show them the patterns of numbers. This will make the memorization much easier.
- Rather than learn a lot of historical facts—dates, names, battles—teach the concept of cause and effect. Then the dates, names, and battles will fall into place.
- When studying literature, instead of checking only for comprehension, discuss the theme of the book in relation to responsibility, or conflict, or survival.
Universal themes can make the difference between knowledge and understanding—learning many facts vs. being able to apply those facts to something meaningful.
It is especially helpful if a theme is carried across all disciplines for months or even an entire year. Some schools have a different universal theme for each year. Possible themes include
- Systems
- Change
- Power
- Adversity
- Point of view
- Human rights
- Family
- Culture
- Persuasion
- Revolution
- Communication
- Cycles
- Symmetry
The International Baccalaureate Organization uses universal themes in its Primary Years Programme. The program uses six transdisciplinary themes as umbrella concepts for all subjects. The themes are
- Who we are
- Where we are in place and time
- How we express ourselves
- How the world works
- How we organize ourselves
- Sharing the planet
- Location
- Place
- Human/environment interaction
- Movement
- Regions
By studying geography using these themes, students learn not only place names, but they learn about communication, transportation, trade, languages, the cultures of the world, why people settle in certain areas, and how landscape and weather influence areas. Studying geography using themes provides a better understanding of history, interactions between countries and cultures, and a better understanding of current events.
Universal themes can also be used at home. Having a common vocabulary and relating many experiences to the same theme will help students learn in all aspects of their lives. For instance, if the theme were “systems,” your family could discuss the characteristics of a system and then see how different systems meet those characteristics. Some systems that you might find around home are
- a bicycle
- aquarium
- plumbing
- electrical
- structure of living quarters (rooms for different purposes)
- systems for accomplishing work around the house
- systems for doing homework
Once children have an idea about systems in general, they will be more ready to learn about other systems, such as
1. circulatory
2. respiratory
3. digestive
4. nervous
5. government
6. structure of the school
7. community
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