Accommodations for Gifted Students: Nurturing Potential and Fostering Growth

In a nurturing learning environment, students and teachers build a place of mutual respect and appreciation. When everything is working, all students feel valued, and teachers are aware of how developmental needs affect learning. Managing the range of academic levels within a classroom is a formidable task. Often, gifted or advanced learners may be under-challenged or under-stimulated, leading to potential struggles with behavior, confidence, and peer relationships.

Giftedness is not fixed-all students have the ability and the potential to excel, and all students have special talents and strengths. The important thing is finding a way to nurture those talents and strengths in such a way that students can develop their potential to the fullest.

Understanding Gifted Learners

Sometimes, categorizing and labeling students can make you shrink a little. After all, you know that all of your students are special in their own way. It is wonderful for teachers to see children absorbing information much more quickly than expected and excelling at many challenging tasks you put before them. At the same time, few teachers understand the best approach to gifted students. It might seem natural to praise them, put them on a pedestal and give them more work. But in fact, treating them out of the ordinary or any different from other students can bring about several problems, making the entire learning experience far less enjoyable and rewarding.

Gifted students often have a wide range of diverse interests coupled with uneven development and distaste for all that is repetitive and unchallenging. Educating those who are gifted and talented requires flexibility on the part of the teacher and the implementation of choice for the student.

Strategies for Supporting Gifted Students

So, how can you support these learners as an educator? Let’s take a look at a few teaching strategies and best practices!

Read also: Navigating SAT Accommodations

Treat Students as Individuals

As you are building your approach and learner profile, keep in mind that exceptional students are unique. They may be twice-exceptional, intellectually gifted children who also have learning disabilities. They may be gifted in one area and not in another. Extraordinary talent in math does not always transfer to an equal talent in writing, art, or science. This can be frustrating for the student. Supporting gifted students usually involves a mixture of acceleration and enrichment of the usual curriculum. A first step is creating an interest survey for the whole class. By reviewing the results, a classroom teacher can personalize lessons and target topics of interest.

Offer the Most Difficult First

"Gifted students don't need to do 25 problems in math when they can do the five most difficult first to demonstrate mastery," says Brulles. She offers this opportunity to all students, not just those identified as gifted. Students who successfully complete the five problems are excused from that night's homework. If classwork is involved, the teacher simply needs to have a few extension activities on hand-tasks that carry the concept to the next level-for students to work on quietly while others complete the regular assignment.

"Most Difficult First" is one manageable way for teachers to compact the curriculum for their high-ability students. With compacting, students get to "throw away" the part of the curriculum that they already know, while receiving full credit for those competencies. This frees up students to work on more challenging content.

Pre-Test for Volunteers

Let's say a teacher is teaching two-digit multiplication. He might do some direct instruction for 10 minutes, then offer students the end-of-chapter test, saying, "If you get 90 percent or higher, you won't have to do the homework or practice work. You'll have different work to do." According to Brulles, some gifted students will take this option, whereas others may decide, "I don't know this; I need the practice work." Again, as in Most Difficult First, this strategy requires having extension work for students who test out of the material.

Prepare to Take It Up

Susan Flores, a 2nd grade teacher in Paradise Valley, meets a range of student abilities by using the standard as her baseline. "My desk serves as a staging area. I have several piles of activities there that take a concept up or down."

For example, when the class is working on the distributive property in math, those "piles" might include differentiated worksheets, word problems, and task cards. Depending on how students grasp the concept, Flores can either reteach, offer practice, or enrich.

Flores also uses "choice boards." In math, she might offer nine ways that students can demonstrate learning of multiplication. "Students can [use] one of their iPad apps or create a game. They jump in where they want to jump in," she notes.

All students in Flores's class can choose whether they want to take their learning to the next level. "I don't say, 'Because you're gifted, you get choice, and because you're not gifted, you don't.'" Optional challenge work is available to anyone who wants to try it.

Let Students Explore Their Passions

Help students immerse themselves in a subject that sparks their passion by providing a topic library or by checking books and magazines out of the library and creating a resource of appropriate videos. Classroom teachers can structure art projects and writing activities about the topic of interest. There is no reason not to teach reading through the focus of trains or to teach math with counting marine animals with students. If they are older, why not explore impact of the topic on history? There are always opportunities to connect.

Infuse Enrichment into Activities

Students may speed through material as they master it. If the suggested pace is two chapters a week but your students can complete two chapters a day because the topic engages them, let them get ahead. Add to the instruction by allowing them to create a presentation, a project, or even a script for a podcast. Provide the space for deeper exploration and understanding. Arrange enrichment activities that gifted students can carry out by themselves at their desks. Allow students to do special projects. However, avoid finding busywork, as students will recognize it for what it is.

Build in Time for Flexible Learning Groups

You can intentionally create small groups for flexible learning with consideration of students’ readiness levels, strengths, and/or interests. This thoughtful planning tool can be used to create a more dynamic learning environment. Keep in mind that the groups continually change based on assessment data related to students’ needs. When the data are studied, students may bubble up and display previously hidden talents. Include identified gifted students in group work. Although gifted learners are capable of working independently, these students need opportunities to work with and socialize with their peers.

Embrace Creative Questioning

Gifted learners are often curious about the world around them, and they may ask detailed questions to satisfy their thirst for knowledge. This curiosity goes beyond simple interest in a topic and can extend to aspects that are seemingly outside of the scope of a lesson. Be respectful of your students’ curiosity, and encourage the search for answers to impossible questions. Students may ask unexpected questions, so try to leave room for exploration when a quirky question comes your way by asking where this question came from and what it is connected to.

Look for evidence of learning by encouraging students to share their intuitive theories about a topic and by completing open-ended tasks in which they extend or apply what they have learned. Gifted children need less drill to master them on fundamental processes; be comfortable in leaving some gaps for students to bridge themselves.

Encourage Self-Directed Learning With Your Students

Self-directed learning is a skill that can be developed with all students. While some children are more self-motivated than others, self-directed learning is crucial to becoming a lifelong learner. Have regular conferences to help students plan their work, and provide support for difficulties and evaluation. Focus on meaningful and relevant content that enriches the topic at hand.

Speak to Student Interests

Janice Mak, a gifted cluster teacher and 7th and 8th grade STEM teacher in Paradise Valley, gives students a menu of options in her computer science class. After stu-dents learn the basics of programming-perhaps through an online course from Stanford University or work with Google CS First clubs-they work in teams to create a robot. Students choose the level of complexity, from designing dogs that bark to building miniature disco rooms in which a record plays and lights flash.

Students can also tailor a project to their interests. In a module on architecture, some students designed a playground for Egyptian students using Legos, Build with Chrome, or Minecraft. One student opted instead to recreate the White House using Minecraft.

The Ignite presentation format offers another way for Mak to differentiate work on the basis of student interest. The presenter has exactly 5 minutes and 20 slides, which auto-advance every 15 seconds, to discuss a topic of interest (aligned to the unit). This activity allows students to share their passion with their peers, be it nanotechnology and its role in medicine, the physics of roller coasters, or the latest advances in virtual reality.

Enable Gifted Students to Work Together

According to NAGC, research shows that enabling gifted students to work together in groups boosts their academic achievement and benefits other students in the classroom, as well. When gifted students work together, they challenge themselves in unexpected ways. They bounce ideas off one another and take a peer's idea to a new place. They also learn that as smart as they are, they, too, must exert effort with challenging content-and that they'll sometimes fail along the way.

That said, gifted kids need to work both in and out of their group. "As adults, we have to be able to work with everyone," explains Flores, "and gifted students might not learn this if they're always separated out." Teachers can provide multiple opportunities for heterogeneous groupings through Think-Pair-Shares, Clock Buddies, and Season Teams.

Plan for Tiered Learning

This approach relies on planning lessons or units at different tiers of difficulty. But does this require teachers to add to their already full plates?

"I don't see it as doing one more thing; I see it as being more strategic," explains Mak. Teachers have to plan for their lessons, so why not develop deep and complex activities for high-ability students at the same time? This one way of planning-providing work at the entry, advanced, and extension levels or at varying Depth of Knowledge Levels-offers a multiplicity of ways to learn. It may take more time in the planning stage, but it is ultimately more efficient because bored students aren't acting out or zoning out in class-they've got challenging work to do-and struggling students are getting support. Once teachers create these tiered resources, they can use them again and again.

Author Carol Ann Tomlinson advocates teaching up-"a practice of first planning a lesson that's challenging for high-end learners and then differentiating for other learners by providing supports that enable them to access that more sophisticated learning opportunity." It replaces "the more common practice of planning for mid-range performers, then extending that lesson for advanced students and watering it down for others." This approach, Tomlinson says, challenges advanced learners more than trying to pump up a "middling" idea-and serves other students better as well.

Tiered Assignments

Tiered assignments refer to assignments that are graduated or tiered by level of difficulty or completeness. Creating a tiered assignment in either a self-contained or regular classroom allows for all levels of learners to complete the same assignment to the best of their ability. Creating an assignment in this manner allows the teacher to present content at varying levels of complexity as well as allows students to present their knowledge in varying ways of complexity. An example of a tiered assignment in younger grades given in Hutchinson and Martin (2012) would be to have one group of students investigate the magnetic properties of various household objects while another group of students could add the complexity of determining the affect of magnet size on magnetic strength.

Open-Ended Assignments

Open-Ended Assignments refer to giving the student choice as to how far they take their own learning-making them both responsible and accountable for their own education. In this way, students can be given choice of both assignment content and product delivery. An example of an open-ended assignment would be to have students research their favorite animal.

Enrichment

Enrichment is the modification most used in programs for gifted and talented learners at the elementary and secondary level (Clark, page 407) and refers to adding disciplines or areas of learning not normally found in the regular curriculum. Enrichment encourages gifted students to focus on the upper levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy-analysis, synthesis and evaluation-in their learning. Independent study falls under the category of enrichment along with individually chosen projects to match the interests of the gifted student. The introduction of research skills and critically thinking skills along with multidisciplinary connections are often taught as a way to enrich the program for gifted learners. Enrichment is theoretically the least expensive method of meeting some of the needs of gifted learners; however, it has the potential to become nothing more than more work for the student and as such it is only effective when used in conjunction with other methods as part of a differentiated curriculum plan.

Acceleration

Acceleration refers to educating the student at their level of ability rather than chronological age. This can take many forms and can be in one or more areas depending on the nature of the gifted student’s development. Students can be accelerated by having early entrance into school, skipping grades, or by being placed in a higher grade for a particular subject or discipline. They can also accelerate through the rate at which they are learning-commonly referred to as telescoping. Because gifted students are often “quick learners” it is possible to have them learn both what is required of them in their current grade and then move on to what is taught in the following grade. The usual result is the gifted student finishes their required school in less time than is typically needed. Research has shown that gifted learners are inclined to identify with those older than themselves and as such, acceleration into higher grades with older students is a viable option with positive consequences both academically and socially. Grouping by ability is another form of acceleration that allows the gifted learner to be placed with students of similar ability rather than chronological age and can take the form of a pullout program, special schools or classroom or clustering within a regular classroom.

What NOT to Do When Teaching Gifted Students

Following are suggestions for how to best serve these students -- and what not to do.

Don't Use These Students as Teacher Assistants

Using gifted students as tutors or teacher assistants for other students in the classroom is inappropriate and unethical, and it does not provide for their social-emotional or academic needs. When an appropriately differentiated education is not provided, gifted learners do not thrive in school, their potential is diminished, and they may even suffer from cognitive and affective harm.

Don't Expect the Gifted Student to Be Well Behaved

Just because a student is smart does not mean that he or she is well behaved. Frequently, if there is a mismatch between classroom instruction and a gifted student's intellectual needs, that child may "act out" or misbehave. It's not because he or she is looking for attention, but because this student may be bored. Gifted students are developmentally asynchronous, meaning that their cognitive and emotional development are out of sync.

Don't Give Them More Work Because They Finish Early

You are sending the implicit message, "Hey, you're smart, here are another 20 math problems," while everyone else is still working on the original set of 10. By giving gifted students more of the same type of work, you are penalizing them for being bright. If the child is intuitive, he or she will actually slow down and never finish early any more because that means getting more work. You want them to produce quality, not quantity.

Don't Isolate Them to Work Independently Without Oversight

While independent research projects based on student interest may provide depth in an area, teachers assume that a gifted student is self-regulated and can work independently on a project without any guidance, oversight, or accountability. Sending them unsupervised to the computer lab, library, or back of the room to work independently may not produce the desired result.

Don't Expect a Gifted Child to Be Gifted in Every Subject Area

Emerging research and new definitions of gifted speak to gifted students having an area or domain of high ability that generally is not across all areas. For example, even though a student is a gifted reader (able to read adult novels), he might not be a good writer -- reading and writing are different skills sets. Just because a student is highly precocious in math does not mean that she will be just as high in science.

Best Practices: Dos and Don'ts

Here's a summary of do's and don'ts for teaching gifted students:

Do:

Understand that gifted students, just like all students, come to school to learn and be challenged.
Pre-assess your students. Find out their areas of strength as well as those areas you may need to address before students move on.
Consider grouping gifted students together for at least part of the school day.
Plan for differentiation. Consider pre-assessments, extension activities, and compacting the curriculum.
Use phrases like "You've shown you don't need more practice" or "You need more practice" instead of words like "qualify" or "eligible" when referring to extension work.
Encourage high-ability students to take on challenges. Because they're often used to getting good grades, gifted students may be risk averse.
Offer training in gifted education to all your teachers.
Figure out in what area(s) students are gifted.
Ensure that task demands and assessments are content rich.
Find other gifted students and create opportunities for them to work together.
Learn about this special diverse population of learners.
Implement research-based curriculum units.

Don't:

Confuse high achievers with high-ability students. High achievers put in the time and effort to succeed in school. This may not be the case with high-ability students. Their gifts may not translate into academic achievement and their behavior can at times appear noncompliant.
Assume that all gifted students are the same and that one strategy works for all.
Assume that by making gifted students tutors, you're providing a learning extension.
Confuse extension activities with additional work. Gifted students need deeper and more complex assignments.
Refer to alternate work for gifted students as "free time." Call it "choice time" or "unfinished work time," so students understand that they are required to tackle a task during this time period.
Give too many directions to students about how they should complete a task. Say, "Here's the end result I'm grading. How you get there is your choice."
Assume that gifted students are growing academically.
Confuse extension activities with additional work.
Use these students, whether formally identified as gifted or not, as teacher assistants.
Expect the gifted student to be well behaved.
Give them more work because they finish early.
Isolate them to work independently without oversight.
Expect a gifted child to be gifted in every subject area.

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