Teaching Gifted & Talented Students

Course Description
Teaching gifted students provides classroom teachers the strategies and techniques they can use to meet the academic and emotional needs of the gifted and talented. Course content includes practical approaches for challenging the most able students in the regular classroom, pull-out, or full-time classes for gifted students. A course emphasis is upon ways of knowing (epistemology) unique to gifted students, and an appropriate pedagogy to specifically enhance each student's giftedness.

Objectives
• Acquire the knowledge and skill to design and develop a comprehensive program appropriate for gifted and talented students in your school and classroom
• Acquire the knowledge and skill to accurately identify gifted and talented students, Pre-K through 12th grade
• Identify a pedagogy and curriculum format that meets the unique attributes of gifted and talented students
• Learn to design compacted, accelerated, enriched, differentiated, thematic, project and independent study, and inquiry study approaches
• Identify and articulate the social, political, parental, and misconceptions faced by teachers of the gifted and talented
• Locate and use educational, psychological, and longitudinal studies to improve educational opportunities for gifted and talented students
• Address the issues and concerns with tests and testing as they relate to the identification, placement, and teaching of gifted and talented students
• Delineate an epistemological system unique to giftedness

Curriculum Design
Teaching Gifted & Talented Students is a 3 credit graduate level or forty-five hour professional development course taught on weekends or over five full days. The following methodologies will be used during the course: lectures, readings, group and individual discussions, and applied practice assignments and papers.

Course Materials
The required textbook for this course is When Gifted Kids Don't have All the Answers by Jim Delisle & Judy Galbraith, Free Spirit Publishing, 2002. A variety of readings will be referenced throughout the course. Included in the course materials is a copy of the bell curve for each student. A comprehensive "Research Bibliography" is included in the student manual.

Session Outline
Module 1: Course Orientation and Overview
Contents:
  1. Present session objectives
  2. Name game
  3. Silly Nillie
  4. Course requirements
  5. Recall past experiences with gifted students
  6. Share success and frustrations in engaging the gifted
  7. The myth of elitism
  8. The IQ?
  9. Assignments

Module 2: Definition and Identification of Giftedness
Contents:
  1. Large group sharing
  2. Activity for gifted students
  3. The definition of giftedness
  4. Intelligence theory
  5. Ways of identifying giftedness
  6. Projects
  7. Assignments

Module 3: Adapting Pedagogy and Curriculum for Gifted Students
Contents:
  1. Paired sharing
  2. Session objectives
  3. Categories challenge
  4. Review
  5. Compacting the curriculum
  6. Variations
  7. Perfectionism
  8. Compacting in grade level or subject area
  9. Assignments

Module 4: Gifted Curriculum Matrix
Contents:
  1. Review definition of gifted
  2. Session objectives
  3. A problem for gifted students
  4. Compacting in grade level or subject area (continued)
  5. Beyond acceleration
  6. Gifted curriculum matrix
  7. Gifted curriculum development
  8. Assignment

Module 5: Paradigm Shift
Contents:
  1. Re-engage the class
  2. Session objectives
  3. Paradigm shift
  4. Program assessment
  5. Synthesis
  6. Assignments

Module 6: Recognizing Emotional Problems Related to Giftedness
Contents:
  1. Review compacting products
  2. Review session objectives
  3. Emotional balance
  4. Assessment for gifted
  5. Cognitive characteristics
  6. Recognizing emotional and social problems
  7. Summary
  8. Assignments

Module 7: Program Development
Contents:
  1. Sharing
  2. Session objectives
  3. Flexible grouping
  4. Academic bowl
  5. Introduction to program development
  6. Assignments

Module 8: Teaching the Gifted
Contents:
  1. Sharing course experience
  2. Session objectives
  3. Three assumptions
  4. The gifted teacher
  5. Gifted teacher curriculum
  6. Inventory
  7. Assignments

Module 9: Ways of Knowing
Contents:
  1. Course review
  2. Session objectives
  3. Ways of knowing:
       • R. Gange – The Conditions for Learning
       • Piaget, J. and B. Inhelder
  4. Science of Teaching
       • Bloom, B. – Human Characteristics and School Learning
  5. Synthesis
  6. Giftedness…A Way of Knowing
  7. Schedule participant project reports
  8. Assignments

Module 10: Resource Any Support for Gifted Education
Contents:
  1. Identification of resources
  2. Resolving philosophical issues
  3. Project reports
  4. Course evaluations
  5. Final exam
  6. Close-up

Grading

Assignment Points Grading Scale

Group and Classroom Participation 20    100 – 93 A

Mid-term exam 10     92 – 85 B

Final Project 40     84 – 77 C

Final Exam 30

Total Points 100

Student Requirements

1. Attend all class sessions for the requisite number of hours (45) and actively participate in all class activities.

2. Complete all reading assignments.

3. Complete and present the required course project. Review research and literature on teaching the gifted, and identify several major findings or themes. Based on these key research themes, design a unit of study for your students. This unit should consist of five lessons, each containing a list of objectives and a description of activities and content.

4. Pass the mid-term and final exams.

Student Academic Integrity
Participants guarantee that all academic class work is original. Any academic dishonesty or plagiarism (to take ideas, writings, etc. from another and offer them as one's own), is a violation of student academic behavior standards as outlined by our partnering colleges and universities and is subject to academic disciplinary action.

Register
To register to take TEI's Teaching Gifted & Talented Students, go to the Course Registration page.