Individualized Tasks and Gifted Education

Hello All! It has been a crazy last couple weeks with my after school program starting this past Monday. This first week we are focusing on relationship building activities and drawing them in, hopefully they’re not in for a rude awakening when the really academic stuff starts. Probably should use the word “stuff” as a teacher of literacy but that is where my head is at tonight.

First off I really enjoyed the Donna Wederich article on individualized responses. This was a very practical way to get students involved in reading and also includes a small way to assess their comprehension or interest. It repeated throughout the article that the entries included were from very high-level students and that was part of the reason the teacher was able to open such a strong dialogue. Do you think this method would be as effective with “average” or “low” students?

I think the assignment could be tailored (there it is again) down or up depending on the student. An average-level student should be able to complete this assignment. I would perhaps give more prompting questions to students on the lower half of the spectrum, rather than letting them have free reign over the letters and journal entries. I also wondered about doing an assignment like this with younger students since the students in this study were in middle school. I think it could easily be done with upper elementary or even 2^nd/3^rd with a lot of prompting.

What struck me from the Herzog article was how different differentiation form looks like for gifted students. I think it is especially hard for teachers who are so used to teaching to the middle, or even the bottom half of the middle, to include those higher order thinking activities. Activities that would be completely out of reach for over half of the class. I think this is why gifted education has taken on criticism or hostility for being “elitist” as the article mentions. I wonder if I as a teacher or if the whole new workforce of teachers is as prepared to teach a gifted student as we are to teach one who is below benchmark? Obviously this is just a part of the big spinning wheel of the push for standardized tests and raising test scores.

Examining gifted education makes me think back to my own. I went to enrichment classes in elementary school which was a pull-out program. Also my 4^th/5^th grade class was relatively small (our teacher looped with us) and the majority of us were very high achievers. Most of the people in my class ended up being the same people I was in honors courses with all through high school. I wonder looking back how much of this was based on intrinsic vs. extrinsic factors. Most of these students were from middle to upper middle class families, most had parents who had college degrees themselves and stay at home moms. Our teacher was also very involved and really nurtured our want to explore higher level thinking. I know for myself that even as a child I was perfectionist, who strived to do my absolute best anyway, even without my parents or teacher pushing me. This is a totally different ball game but how much of a child’s performance at school or even ability level do you think is just luck of the draw based on factors completely outside of their control?