This essay will critically examine giftedness as a characteristic of diversity in a classroom, and provide assessment and teaching strategies that can help support students from this group in the classroom environment. In New Zealand one of the principles of the New Zealand curriculum is inclusion, which states "The curriculum is non-sexist, not-racist, and non-discriminatory; it ensures that students identities, languages, abilities, and talents are recognised and affirmed and that their learning needs are addressed" (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 9). This inclusion leads to classrooms that have very diverse students varying culturally, intellectually, physically, socio-economically and linguistically (Alton-Lee, 2003). Giftedness is …show more content…
7). but the disadvantages are that some school may make it too wide or too …show more content…
Various methods are used to gather data about the student for example, observations, teacher rating scales, product, process and performance results, nominations by teachers, parents, communities and peers, tests - standardised achievement, intelligence tests and teacher designed tests (Riley, 2004, as cited in Easter, 2011). The benefits of using checklists and rating scales are they can be used to accurately identify gifted students including those from Maori and minority cultures as long as the teacher has a good knowledge of the culture and how this may influence how giftedness is manifested. Products, processes and performances when taking into account different cultures ideas of giftedness are also effective (Bevan-Brown, 2009). Standardised tests of intelligence, achievement and creativity are useful to identify gifted students because they have high reliability and validity and the results can be compared to the norm, but it must be remembered that these test also have disadvantages due sometimes having a too low a ceiling that the gifted students knowledge or talent is above this level and so is not noticed, some have cultural and linguistic bias and some are not appropriate for children who are gifted with learning difficulties (twice exceptional
Ryser, G. R., & McConnell, K. (2003). Scales for Identifying Gifted Students. Waco, TX: Prufrock Press.
Special focus needs to be allotted to not only the kids struggling but the kids who are excelling. Learning is the sole purpose of school, and for advanced students who already mastered the classroom skills, they need an extra challenge so they are learning too. Gifted education is essential for fully developing and engaging precocious children. Lubinski said, “If you’re trying to solve problems in the world like climate change and terrorism and STEM innovation, and transportation and managing our health care, you want intellectually precocious youth who have had their intellectual needs
Jarosewich, T., Pfeiffer, S. I., & Morris, J. (2002). Identifying gifted students using teacher rating scales: A review of existing instruments. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 20(4), 322-336.
The problem associated with how students are chosen to join a gifted and talented program stems from the way that we define giftedness. Because there are countless ways in which any individual can define talent, the government created a federal task force in 1972 to study gifted education in order to standardize the way in which schools choose students for and implement their gifted and talented programs. The task force’s results are known as the Marland Report and include much information as a result of their research, including a decision that a public school’s gifted and talented programs should aim to serve between 3 and 5 percent o...
The Talents Unlimited Model was created under the philosophy that all students, both those identified as gifted and those not, would benefit from enrichment programs. The model is used to educate teachers on how to use differentiated instruction to use “higher order cognitive tasks to help students with varying abilities use their preferred thinking talents to manipulate instruction to solve problems, see broad relationships, evaluate varying perspectives, draw comparisons among disparate viewpoints, and predict causes and effects” (Schlichter, 2009, p. 434).
Donovan, M. Suzanne and Christopher T. Cross (2002, August). Minority Students in Special and Gifted Education. Retrieved from http://site.ebrary.com.ezproxy2.library.drexel.edu/lib/drexel/-docDetail.action?docID=10032383.
Based from the information provided by VanTassel-Baska, et. Al. (2009), gifted and talented students face the same issues as their regular peers but they have different way of viewing these issues and it affects them differently as well. The book discussed different issues that gifted learners face and recommendations on how to address these issues were also available for teachers, administrators and other school personnel. Also, Carol Strip Whitney (2011) in her book entitle Helping Gifted Learners Soar discussed stress as a factor that can distract and overpower anyone including gifted learners and for the gifted learners, there are many reasons and causes of stress. In this reflection, I will focus on two causes of stress, which are gifted learners as social capital and issues related to race and achievement.
The bulk of legal cases are in the realm of special education, but only time will tell if gifted education will challenge our highest courts. For now, district administrators and teachers must continue with due diligence to meet the needs of gifted learners, but they must always stay abreast of rulings from the Office of Dispute Resolution. By following the due process hearings, districts can identify commonalities with their own district practice and adjust as needed. Gifted education enrollment numbers are dwarfed by the special education numbers, but the parents of gifted students are no less vocal and often have more resources available to them. Regardless of what the law has said or will say, it is the school’s responsibility to grow all learners, but realize that is our gifted learners who have the innate ability to truly make a difference in our
Rogers, K. B. (1991). The relationship of grouping practices to the education of the gifted and talented learner. Retrieved April 14, 2004, from http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/rogers.html
It is an educator’s job to embrace and acknowledge the rich diversity all the children collectively bring to the classroom, while understanding that the children do not need to be treated the same because they are not the same as each other, but be respected and accepted for their differences. Inclusion is an essential; plank in the broad platform of social justice and raising achievement is a goal which all educators much hold for their pupils, It is important that early year professionals are aware of all different ways in which society constructs (Neaum 2010) this involves taking account children’s social cultural and linguistic diversity and including learning style, family circumstances, location in curriculum decision making process so all children are recognised and valued (Nutbrown and Clough 2006)
Ryser, G. R., & McConnell, K. (2003). Scales for Identifying Gifted Students. Waco, TX: Prufrock Press.
In the society of today, there are various educators who believe in assessment as proper method to measure the performance of a child in school as well as the overall achievement of a specific school system. The assessment may be presented in the form of verbal, written, or multiple choice, and it usually pertains to certain academic subjects in the school curriculum. Recently, many educators began to issue standardized tests to measure the intelligence of a common student body. (Rudner, 1989) These standardized tests were initially created to reveal the success in institutional school programs, and exhibit the abilities of students today. The standardized tests can reveal the strengths and weaknesses of a student as well as the admission into certain programs. The test results also assist various schools in determining the proper curriculum, evaluate a specific school system, or a particular school related program.
Meeting the needs of academic diverse learners is the responsibility of their instructor. These diverse learners may include students who are one or more grade levels below classmates and the gifted student who is that much above. How can educators meet the needs of these students when their learning abilities are found at opposite ends of the instructional spectrum? The answer is planning successful lessons involving engaging activities, a variety of texts, technology implementation, and flexible grouping. The following is a lesson I implemented covering these key components.
Author unkown (2003, March 9). In gifted classrooms is diversity lacking?. Salisbury Daily Times. Retrieved March 10, 2003, from http://www.dailytimesonline.com/new/stories/20030309/localnews/1142640.html
The identification and definition of giftedness have been controversial for many, many decades. Originally, IQ test scores were the only way of determining giftedness. An IQ test would be given and some number score, such as 12-, would be the point of cut-off (Cook, Elliott, Kratochwill, & Travers, 2000). More recently, intellectual giftedness is usually identified and defined by the specific school systems’ ideas and perspectives. There is no generally accepted definition of giftedness, but the Javits Gifted and Talented Education Act defines it as: