Blogging about gifted education is growing. Unwrapping the Gifted, written by Tamara Fisher and published by Teacher Magazine, is the latest to hit the scene. Each new blog that is created (scroll down in column on left to find a list with links) approaches gifted education from a slightly different perspective, and each is a valuable resource for a different reason. I really encourage you to visit the different blogs often.

 

Tamara Fisher is a K-12 gifted education specialist in northwestern Montana and president-elect of the Montana Association of Gifted and Talented Education. With Karen Isaacson, she is also coauthor of Intelligent Life in the Classroom: Smart Kids and Their Teachers. In her blog, Fisher discusses news and developments in the gifted education community and offers advice for teachers on working with gifted students. She presents some interesting analogies about understanding and working with this population of kids, as well as thought-provoking questions. Her aim is to “generate some timely thought, reflection, discussion, and questions.” She does a good job of modeling higher-level thinking questions by posing open-ended questions for teachers to consider.

 

Be sure and read through reader comments after each post as they offer a variety of perspectives on gifted education and also offer strategies that other teachers have used successfully.

 

The two most recent posts on Unwrapping the Gifted are about the meaning of the term “gifted” and how gifted kids may be “shut out of class participation because they’re perceived as being ‘already where they need to be.’”

You may have noticed that the format of this blog changed a bit recently, and I want to make certain readers understand the search possibilities available. This is the 120^th weekly blog that has been posted in more than 2 years, so there is a lot of information here. There are two ways to search.

·         Categories—In the left column of the web page, you will find a section titled Categories. Within that section, you will see a list of more than a dozen subjects. If you click on any of these, all the articles that fit into that grouping will appear.

·         Search—You can also search for words, phrases, or topics you do not see listed under Categories. With the new format of the blog, you will need to sign in to use the search function. There is a section on the upper right where you can register. Your user name and password are case sensitive.

 

Example—You might want to search on “underachievement.” To do this, click on the word Search either at the bottom of the Categories list or near the top of the page. Once you do this, a number of boxes will appear and you can fill in the appropriate information. (You do not need to fill in all the boxes.) Click on Search, and all of the articles will come up that meet the criteria you entered.

 

These are great tools, so make sure you take advantage of them.