Advocates for Spec. Ed., Gifted Weigh In on ESEA Rewrite - Education Week

Advocates for Spec. Ed., Gifted Weigh In on ESEA Rewrite - Education Week

May 5, 2015

Audience: Policy Makers, Educators, TAG & SPED Teachers and Families

Key Points: The United States Senate Education Committee on April 16 approved an amended and bolstered revision to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The next step is the Senate Floor. There would be an increased push for talented and gifted education funding and higher/better provisions for teacher support in TAG through federal funding of teacher training. It hopes to reduce the "excellence gap"

Another study about Underachieving Gifted Students

Using Self-Regulated Learning to Reverse Underachievement in Talented Students, 

Sally M. Reis, Meredith J. Greene, Neag Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development.

I like this article because it talks about actual interventions to help gifted students who have trouble with self-regulation. Some include:

1. Guide learners' self-beliefs, goal setting, and expectations
• help students frame new information or feedback in a positive rather than a negative manner (e.g. "keeping track of your homework assignments will help you manage this course successfully," rather than "if you don't keep track you will fail.")
• provide specific cues for using self-regulatory strategies
2. Promote reflective dialogue
• teacher modeling of reflective practices (think aloud)
• student practice with reflective dialogue
• group discussions to think through problems/cases (collaborative learning)
3. Provide corrective feedback
• performance standards must be clear and perceived as attainable
• phrase feedback (positive or negative) as a statement about the task of learning, not about the learner
4. Help learners make connections between abstract concepts
• use case-based instructions or examples that students come up with themselves
• use hands-on learning activities
• help students learn to separate relevant from irrelevant information (i.e., help them know where and how to focus their attention; guide their reference standards)
5. Help learners link new experiences to prior learning
• use experiential learning activities
• focus on application of knowledge in broader contexts
• integrate real-life examples with classroom information

ADHD in a Gifted Child

Gifted Education Digests, Gifted Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Author: Maureen Neihart, October 2003

I have run into kids who are gifted with ADHD in my classes and clubs so I want to learn some methods to work with these kids. This article is short but it sums up some of the issues.

Gifted children are often harder to diagnose with ADHD, those who are diagnosed in average have more severe ADHD than their age peers. This seems consistent with the lesser cases of ADHD in gifted children going undiagnosed and only the more severe cases are found. Unfortunately, ADHD in gifted children can result in very strong setbacks when compared to their ability level without the disorder. Underachievement in gifted children is very prevalent. The research says that we should not assume that conventional interventions will work with gifted children. For example since gifted children tend to prefer complexity, shortening work time and simplifying tasks may increase their frustration.