Effective Teacher Chapter Summary

1. How might reading "Effective Teacher" influence your work with the gifted and talented?

In Chapter 13, we learn about Linda Michael. She made interesting points about the way she works with gifted students. Self-contained classroom, inquiry based lessons, and flexible schedules are all part of her methods. A point that I found interesting is self-contained classroom for students that are identified as superior cognitive or multiple areas. I agree that students that are gifted need to have the appropriate environment to flourish. Similar to students with disabilities, the gifted students have special needs that require accommodations.

Amongst her teaching strategies, she points out the importance of knowing your students. I think in fact, this is an important point

Michael discussed is the importance of being a facilitator and not a lecture. Ms. Michael suggests leading the classroom with questions that the students have to analyze and respond to. This is certainly the way; I would lead a gifted classroom. I agree that we need the students to think for themselves a lot more, and give them information to analyze critique and conclude. Not just simply given them all information already processed.

2. Describe various definitions used to describe this portion of children in our educational system.

The Federal government defines gifted and talented children as “students, children or youth who give evidence of high achievement capabilities in areas such as, intellectual, creativity, artistic, or leadership capacity or in specific academic fields, and who need services and activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop those capabilities.”

The National Association for Gifted Children defines gifted individuals as “those who demonstrate outstanding levels of aptitude or competence in one or more domains. Domains include any structured area of activity with its own symbol system, and /or set of sensorimotor