gifted students essay

TWO WRITING TEACHERS

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“I Feel Like a Real Writer:” Supporting Gifted Students in Writing

“Lucky you! You’ve got gifted kids.They GET IT.”

You’d think working with gifted students would be a smooth, easy road, like those highways in Nevada whose view is unbroken by anything but horizon.

Let’s get real. Our road has speed bumps – plenty of them. If I had my way, gifted education would be a part of the special education spectrum. That, however, is a different soapbox for a different day. 

We can, however, dispel a key myth. Not all gifted readers are strong writers. Even kids who are great with words are plagued by any number of factors. Some wrestle the many-headed hydra of perfectionism. Others have an abundance of ideas but no clear strategies for wrangling those thoughts into writing. Still others are victims of impostor syndrome, wrongly comparing themselves to others and continually falling short. Writing instruction for gifted students is as affective as it is skill-based.

We had another obstacle, a familiar one: COVID. No longer was I able to work right alongside my “loveies.” Despite our district being in-person since August, I was required to hold classes via Zoom to keep classroom “bubbles” intact. 

If we wanted a writing community, we’d have to move beyond flair pens, clipboards, fancy paper, and flexible seating. We’d need a safe place to share writing, where students could gather articulate feedback, and learn the joy of cultivating a responsive, positive readership. Where kids see themselves as writers and enjoy the craft of it.

In short, I wanted what I had through the Slice of Life community: Joy. Love of craft. Validation. 

Opening the Gates: Establishing Safety and Community

As a class, our first order of business was to create the time and space to craft in the modes and genres we loved most. At the end of each day, students posted screenshots or photos of a passage they felt proud to have written that day, and complemented at least three other writers.

Like cats coaxed from under the bed, most grew more comfortable composing. Once I had them writing, I wanted kids to feel the pride of having others read and appreciate their work.

I started with home-grown mentor text: the comment section on my own blog. We identified types of feedback to share: compliments, encouragement, connections, quotes from text, and literary analysis. They did not disappoint.

We had one hard and fast rule: no critique (yet).

Of course kids wanted to make suggestions. (Did I mention that many gifted students feel strongly about “right” ways to do things?) I steered them in a different direction, once again using Slice of Life as the example.

Consider: In our blogging community, how often do readers leave unsolicited advice or suggestions? Just about…never. We trust one another as writers, which allows us to trust OURSELVES as writers. 

Slowly but surely my kids realized they were writing for a genuine audience of peers. I couldn’t ask for more.

Well…perhaps I could.

Revision: The Elephant in the Room

“If no one offers corrections, how can students improve their work?”

I can’t get around it: students need to develop writing skills. Even some of the most talented writers still have hair-graying spelling and conventions.

I started with a self-paced “Fiction Dojo” on the Schoology app. Kids “leveled up” by revising or editing a single area such as capitalization, dialogue, or balance of narration. Students needing support worked with me in breakout rooms.

I learned quickly the “Dojo” system didn’t translate exactly as hoped. Not every student needed to review every single level, and some needed to complete “belts” out of order in the interest of sense-making. 

It was the universe’s sneaky way of reminding me to TRUST my WRITERS. After each revision, students often asked what they “should do next.” Sometimes I gave that guidance, but mostly I said, “I trust your judgment. What do you think your readers need from you?”

What happened, in turn, was the crafting of stories that were more strongly edited and revised than I ever could have accomplished through individual conferencing and assignments.

As for building critique back in, I’ll confess I’ve never had much luck with peer conferences. My kids have a tough time directing that conversation regardless of structure. No chart or questionnaire has ever fit.

And then it hit me. CROWDSOURCING. 

What wisdom from the “hive mind” did they need? A title? Character names? Help making a scene better or more readable? Putting these questions in the hands of WRITERS, seeking feedback from READERS, made the most sense.

Friends, it was magic. Writers trusted themselves to know what they needed help with, and they trusted their peers enough to support without judgment.

Looking Ahead

I think I’m onto something here. Even my most reluctant writers have more confidence and joy in writing than I’ve ever seen. Throughout the coming weeks and into next year, I’m looking for ways to strengthen self-efficacy and community through shared reading and feedback.

Our next area of exploration follows a “what-if.” What if we use STUDENT writing as mentor text? What if we use students’ writing as a basis for book clubs, for literary analysis? Would that encourage students to further develop their craft? Would it engage them more deeply in reading and conversations about text? My intuition says yes, and I’m anxious to learn more. In a perfect world, I would farm this strategy out to my mainstream classroom colleagues.

Now, there are still places where my lovies fall short on their writing rubrics. I’ve learned I can’t control all of their conversation or revisions. I’ve discovered there are still places I’d love kids to “get to,” but that’s not my journey. 

Sometimes their cars are on that Nevada highway, driving somewhere I never would have imagined, and that destination is quite fabulous. 

I’m just glad to be along for the ride.

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Published by Lainie Levin

Mom of two, full-time teacher, wife, daughter, sister, friend, and holder of a very full plate View all posts by Lainie Levin

7 thoughts on “ “I Feel Like a Real Writer:” Supporting Gifted Students in Writing ”

I cannot wait for next year to start to try all this out! I can only imagine, though, how much planning and ‘inner thinking’ must’ve gone into this! STUPENDOUS! 👏🏼

Thank you! It’s the result of a lot of evolution as a teacher of writing. What’s exciting to me is knowing how much FURTHER we can go!

I remember your posts on “crowdsourcing” and its effects, all stemming from putting writers in the driver’s seat and fostering trust. Invaluable! This collective magic – transformational. That community-building, that sense of belonging – priceless. I also recognize so many truths here regarding the “myths” and what I love best is seeing a teacher stopping to consider what her students really need and thinking out of the box about how to make this happen. No “oh wells” or “I don’t know hows” or “things are MOSTLY ok, so…” but how can I get them where they need to be (any student, all students, for all have gifts) and to love the learning journey. It is an evolutional journey for the teacher as well – try and try again, asking “more” of students AND self. So well-done. I sense your own joy as well as theirs, Lainie. It’s something we all need more of in education – for if teaching is a chore, so will the learning be. Just – bravo!

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Thank you, Fran! It’s weird, because even though I can acknowledge how far we come, it only makes me realize how much further we CAN go together. As for the stopping to consider my kids, I’m glad we worked so hard to develop community. In years like these, where there is so much NOISE coming at educators, from every direction, the children are always the one to make things worthwhile. They saved me this year, as they’ve done so often in the past. You also make an important point about how teaching and learning should be a joy rather than a chore. A colleague and I were just having that conversation yesterday – that we should ALL be in touch with the things we’re passionate about learning. If we don’t have those things, well…maybe we’re not in the right place. Thanks for your thoughtful feedback, Fran.

Lainie, thank you for a thought-provoking post. As I was reading this, I found myself nodding along and saying, “yes” more than once. I really appreciate how you used the SOL community as a model for what you wanted in your classroom. As I move into a classroom next year after four years out, I’ve been thinking about how I wanted to do the same thing. Your ideas on bringing others into the conversation regarding editing and revising are a definite help as I put together my own plans. Thank you!

Tim, that’s exactly what I hope to do in posts like these – to get readers to nod along and say “Yes!” “Exactly!” It’s my goal to get folks riled up so they’ll want to take an action (little or big) in whatever direction they feel so moved. And Tim, I can’t help but think how lucky your kids are going to be to have you FULL TIME. You get to take those children under your wing, and THAT will be a wonderful thing for this world.

Well, consider me riled! When I think back to the early years of my teaching career, it was books (good books!) that I looked to for inspiration and direction when it came to developing writers. It’s great — beyond great — to have this community and the experience it shares. Thanks for being a part of it!

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Identifying and Nourishing Gifted Students

Let’s broaden our definition of gifted students to include creativity, writing skills, musical and artistic talent, superior leadership and speaking skills, and moral character.

Having just seen He Named Me Malala , a film about the life and work of teenage Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, I wonder whether this young woman, gifted in thinking, values, courage, and public speaking, would ever have been selected for a gifted program in a U.S. school. In the film, she notes that her performance in some of her academic subjects is not that good. A few days earlier, I'd received the book Failing Our Brightest Kids by Chester Finn, Jr. and Brandon Wright, a critique of how we're failing our best students. Carefully skimming the book and the index, I saw only one mention of the arts and some musings about whether considering giftedness and talent adds to or "muddies" the authors' topic. Perhaps more muddying is needed!

Discussions of the best and brightest seem to invariably focus on kids who score high in math and language testing, and some who also demonstrate high scientific aptitude. I agree that we need to do a better job of identifying these kids and nourishing the development of their abilities.

But we should also discuss how we all too often fail others of our most gifted and talented students and how this begins with our very limited definition of gifted and bright . Because of this narrow definition, we fail many of our most gifted kids at a significant cost to the students themselves -- and to us as a nation.

Defining, Identifying, and Nourishing Gifted Students

How do we define gifted? How do we identify gifted students? How do we nourish these talents in our schools and classrooms?

Our current definitions, usually limited to verbal and math test scores and/or IQ, exclude students who missed the cutoff point on tests. A student might be a highly gifted writer or extraordinary social analyst and have great moral character, but he or she might be a mediocre test taker.

In my ideal school, giftedness would include any of the following:

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This is step one for both school districts and teachers, who should be committed to identifying important talents ignored in our normative focus on high test scores. And I strongly believe that the qualities of moral courage and public speaking skills demonstrated by someone like Malala should be on that list.

Part of the problem relates to the second question: How do we identify gifted students? We are stuck in a paradigm in which we allow what is most easily measured to define our focus. The tail wags the dog. Testing easily identifies verbal and mathematical skills and memorization. When we move into other areas, we find it more challenging to come up with methods of identifying talent. Yet it isn't difficult for music and art experts to identify talent in their fields. Leadership ability is evident in classes and schools. While identifying moral talent is more value laden, there are individuals, even short of Malala's gifts, who demonstrate their moral courage in our classrooms and schools, or their volunteer work outside of school. We need to work on better identification methods, rather than excluding talent that isn't easy to measure.

A recent NPR piece speaks well to the subject of how we can identify and nourish gifted students in every school and classroom .

The Role of Teachers, Parents, and Schools

Sharing information about student talents should be a critical part of the process. Teachers from different disciplines and the arts must combine their impressions of students for a fuller picture of their talents. Parent input should be actively sought. Many parents know of their children's exceptional talents that could go unnoticed in a school setting.

Teacher observational skills can be improved in identifying exceptional leadership ability and moral courage. In social studies and English classes, students should be given the opportunity to write about social issues and do presentations of learning that demonstrate their public speaking ability. There are many kids who may not write perfect essays, but who demonstrate extraordinary articulateness when addressing a group.

Who is that student who frequently speaks up with a strong, positive, moral position on some issue related to racial prejudice, sex-related discrimination, immigration policies, or climate control? Is this not a gift that our society needs?

Schools should provide multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate their talents and receive mentoring to further develop them.

One example is presentations of learning that utilize artistic and musical talent as a means of communication. I observed such a presentation at Eagle Rock School in which a musically gifted student played his guitar and sang a song he'd written about his learning experiences during that trimester. That's way outside our usual educational frame, and that's my point. We have to move beyond that frame if we expect to nourish and help strengthen our most gifted students.

Science appears to be an easier area, because many schools provide opportunities for students to develop science projects that can be entered in local and even national competitions.

Identifying and Nourishing Morally Gifted Leaders

When it comes to leadership, there have been very gifted leaders who were also destructive. Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez were gifted, but so were Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler. So students gifted as leaders need special attention to determine whether their moral values could be challenged or better developed, or if they already have a commitment to positive social change.

If you share my commitment to also identifying gifted children with great moral sensitivity, and nourishing those talents, I highly recommend reading Identity Development in Gifted Children: Moral Sensitivity and The Moral Sensitivity of Gifted Children and the Evolution of Society , both from the educational non-profit Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted. You should also take a look at Ben Johnson's Edutopia post, How to Support Gifted Students in Your Classroom .

Including All Students

Another NPR piece brought up the issue of how our Latino and black children are most frequently lost in the process . It should be no surprise that when the criteria for gifted focus on test scores, Latino, black, and immigrant kids would be the most shortchanged.

Finally, I just saw this story about an incredible 17-year-old woman who started The National Youth Orchestra of Iraq . She did this in the midst of the war and was recently named Visionary of the Year by the Euphrates Institute.

Would Zulan Sultan have been selected for a gifted program? Would she have scored well on our tests that are used to determine the best and brightest? Very possibly not. That needs to change.

How to identify, understand and teach gifted children

Professor, Faculty of Education and Arts, Australian Catholic University

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John Munro has been a chief researcher on ARC funded projects and has completed contracted projects for Australian educational authorities.

Australian Catholic University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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This is a longer read at just under 2,000 words. Enjoy!

The beginning of the 2019 school year will be a time of planning and crystal-gazing. Teachers will plan their instructional agenda in a general way. Students will think about another year at school. Parents will reflect on how their children might progress this year.

One group of students who will probably attract less attention are the gifted learners . These students have a capacity for talent, creativity and innovative ideas. They could be our future Einsteins.

They will do this only if we support them to learn in an appropriate way. And yet, there is less likely to be explicit planning and provision throughout 2019 to support these students. They’re more likely to be overlooked or even ignored.

Giftedness in the media

You may have noticed the recent interest in gifted learning and education in the media. Child Genius on SBS provided a glimpse of what the brains of some young students can do.

We can only marvel at their ability to store large amounts of information in memory, spell words correctly they’d probably not heard before and unscramble complex anagrams.

The Insight program on SBS, provided another perspective.

Students identified as gifted explained how they learned and their experiences with formal education. Most accounts pointed to a clear mismatch between how they preferred to learn and how they were taught.

Twice exceptional

The students on the Insight program showed the flipsides of the gifted education story. While some gifted students show high academic success – the academically gifted students, others show lower academic success – the “ twice exceptional ” students.

Many of the most creative people this world has known are twice exceptional . This includes scientists such as Einstein, artists such as Van Gogh, authors such as Agatha Christie and politicians such as Winston Churchill.

Read more: Intellectually gifted students often have learning disabilities

Their achievements are one reason we’re interested in gifted learning. They have the potential to contribute significantly to our world and change how we live. They’re innovators. They give us the big ideas, possibilities and options. We describe their achievements, discoveries and creations as “talent”.

These talented outcomes are not random, lucky or accidental. Instead, they come from particular ways of knowing their world and thinking about it. A talented footballer sees moves and possibilities their opponents don’t see. They think, plan, and act differently. What they do is more than what the coach has trained them to do.

Understanding gifted learning

One way of understanding gifted learning is to unpack how people respond to new information. Let me first share two anecdotes.

A year three class was learning about beetles. We turned over a rock and saw slater beetles scurrying away. I asked:

Has anyone thought of something I haven’t mentioned?

Marcus, a student in the class, asked:

How many toes does a slater have?

Why do you ask that?

Marcus replied:

They are only this long and they’re going very fast. My mini aths coach said that if I wanted to go faster I had to press back with my big toes. They must have pretty big toes to go so quick.

He continued with possibilities about how they might breathe and use energy. Marcus’ teacher reported that he often asked “quirky”, unexpected questions and had a much broader general knowledge than his peers. She had not considered the possibility he might be gifted.

Mike was solving year 12 calculus problems when he was six. He has never attended regular school but was home-schooled by his parents, who were not interested in maths. He learned about quadratic and cubic polynomials from the Khan Academy . I asked him if it was possible to draw polynomials of x to the power of 7 or 8. He did this without hesitation, noting he had never been taught to do this.

Gifted students learn in a more advanced way

People learn by converting information to knowledge. They may then elaborate, restructure or reorganise it in various ways. Giftedness is the capacity to learn in more advanced ways.

First, these students learn faster . In a given period they learn more than their regular learning peers. They form a more elaborate and differentiated knowledge of a topic. This helps them interpret more information at a time.

Second, these students are more likely to draw conclusions from evidence and reasoning rather than from explicit statements. They stimulate parts of their knowledge that were not mentioned in the information presented to them and add these inferences to their understanding.

Read more: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

This is called “ fluid analogising ” or “far transfer”. It involves combining knowledge from the two sources into an interpretation that has the characteristics of an intuitive theory about the information. This is supported by a range of affective and social factors , including high self-efficacy and intrinsic goal setting, motivation and will-power.

Their theories extend the teaching. They’re intuitive in that they’re personal and include possibilities or options the student has not yet tested. Parts of the theory may be incorrect. When given the opportunity to reflect on or field-test them, the student can validate their new knowledge, modify it or reject it.

Marcus and Mike from the earlier anecdotes engaged in these processes. So did Einstein, Churchill, Van Gogh and Christie.

Verbally gifted

A gifted learning profile manifests in multiple ways. Much of the information we’re exposed to is made up of concepts that are linked and sequenced around a topic or theme. It’s formed using agreed conventions. It may be a written narrative, a painting, a conversation or football match. Some students exposed to part of a text infer its topic and subsequent ideas – their intuitive theory about it.

These are the verbally gifted students. In the classroom they infer the direction of the teaching and give the impression of being ahead of it. This is what Mike did when he extended his knowledge beyond what the information taught him. Most of the tasks used in the Child Genius program assessed this. The children used what they knew about spelling patterns to spell unfamiliar words and to unscramble complex anagrams.

Visual-spatially gifted

Other students think about the teaching information in time and space. They use imagery and infer intuitive theories that are more lateral or creative. In the classroom their interpretations are often unexpected and may question the teaching. These are the non-verbally gifted or visual-spatially gifted students.

They frequently do not learn academic or social conventions well and are often twice exceptional. They’re more likely to challenge conventional thinking. Marcus did this when he visualised the slaters with large “beetle toes”.

What we can learn from gifted students

Educators and policy makers can learn from the student voice in the recent media programs. Some of the students on Insight told us their classrooms don’t provide the most appropriate opportunities for them to show what they know or to learn.

The twice exceptional students in the Insight program noted teachers had a limited capacity to recognise and identify the multiple ways students can be gifted. They reminded us some gifted profiles, but not the twice-exceptional profile, are prioritised in regular education.

These students thrive and excel when they have the opportunity to show their advanced interpretations initially in formats they can manage, for example, in visual and physical ways. They can then learn to use more conventional ways such as writing.

Multi-modal forms of communication are important for them. Examples include drawing pictures of their interpretations, acting out their understanding and building models to represent their understanding. The use of diagrams by the the famous physicist Richard Feynman is an example of this.

For students like Mike, adequate formal educational provision simply does not exist. With the development of information communication technology, it would be hoped that in the future adaptive and creative curricula and teaching practices could be developed for those students whose learning trajectories are far from the regular.

As a consequence, we have high levels of disengagement from regular education by some gifted students in the middle to senior secondary years. High ability Australian students under-achieve in both NAPLAN and international testing.

The problem with IQ

Identification using IQ is problematic for some gifted profiles. Some IQ tests assess a narrow band of culturally valued knowledge. They frequently do not assess general learning capacity.

As well, teachers are usually not qualified to interpret IQ assessments. The parents in the Insight program mentioned both the difficulty in having their children identified as gifted and the high costs IQ tests incurred. In Australia, these assessments can cost up to A$475 .

An obvious alternative is to equip teachers and schools to identify and assess students’ learning in the classroom for indications of gifted learning and thinking in its multiple forms. To do this, assessment tasks need to assess the quality, maturity and sophistication of the students’ thinking and learning strategies, their capacity to enhance knowledge, and also what students actually know or believe is possible about a topic or an issue.

Read more: Show us your smarts: a very brief history of intelligence testing

Classroom assessments usually don’t assess this. They are designed to test how well students have learned the teaching, not what additional knowledge the students have added to it.

Gifted students benefit from open-ended tasks that permit them to show what they know about a topic or issue. Such tasks include complex problem solving activities or challenges and open-ended assignments. We are now developing tools to assess the quality and sophistication of gifted students’ knowledge and understanding.

Tips for teachers and parents

Over the course of 2019, teachers can look for evidence of gifted learning by encouraging their 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. This can include more complex problem solving.

During reading comprehension, for example, teachers can plan tasks that require higher-level thinking, including analysis, evaluation and synthesis. Teachers need to assess and evaluate students’ learning in terms of the extent to which they elaborate on the teaching information.

Parents are often the first to notice their child learns more rapidly, remembers more, does things in more advanced ways or learns differently from their peers. Most educators have heard a parent say: “I think my child is gifted.” And sometimes the parent is correct.

Parents can use modern technology to record specific instances of high performance by their children, and share these with their child’s teachers. The mobile phone and iPad provide a good opportunity for video-recording a child’s questions during story time, their interpretations of unfamiliar contexts such as a visit to a museum, drawings or inventions the child produces and how they do this, and ways in which they solve problems in their everyday lives. These records can provide useful evidence later for educators and other professionals.

Read more: Explainer: what is differentiation and why is it poorly understood?

Parents also have a key role to play in helping their child understand what it means to learn differently from one’s peers, to value their interpretations and achievements and how they can interact socially with peers who may operate differently.

It is students’ intuitive theories about information that lead to creative, talented outcomes and innovative products. If an education system is to foster creativity and innovation, teachers need to recognise and value these theories and help these students convert them into a talent. Teachers can respond to gifted knowing and learning in its multiple forms if they know what it looks like in the classroom and have appropriate tools to identify it.

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The justification for gifted education is simple: Academically advanced children should be given work at their speed and level, both to nurture their talents and prevent them from becoming bored and disruptive in class.

Everything else—from how to define and identify gifted students, particularly those from traditionally underrrepresented groups, to how to serve them and nurture their long-term success—gets complicated.

“Where special ed. has a federal mandate—you must meet these students’ needs—we don’t have that,” said Jill Adelson, a research scientist at Duke University’s Talent Identification Program and the editor of the journal Gifted Child Quarterly. “We don’t even have a common definition across states of what gifted education is.”

Across several symposia at the American Educational Research Association’s annual meeting here, researchers added new wrinkles to the debate over how to academically support gifted students.

Slow Growth

For example: Prior studies have found most students experience a “summer slump,” growing faster during school years and flattening out over summers. But a study previewed at the meeting found top-performing students show less flattening from school to summer in the elementary grades—and much slower growth during the school year than average-performing students.

Karen Rambo-Hernandez of West Virginia University and Matthew Makel of Duke looked at math and reading performance in 10 states that use the NWEA MAP computer-adaptive test in reading and mathematics. The researchers compared students who tested at the mean in 3rd grade to those who tested about three grade levels ahead of that, and then followed both groups’ growth through 5th grade.

“The farther you started from your school’s mean, the slower your growth,” Rambo-Hernandez said. “In reading, the students who started at two standard deviations above the mean had much slower growth during the school year, and then they just kept trucking along with that same flow over the summer. So there was a real question as to whether or not those students were benefiting at all from their time in school.”

Top-performing students in math were more likely to show higher growth during the school year than in the summer, but in both subjects top students grew significantly slower during the school year and faster during the summer than the average student. Those who started out ahead didn’t outpace the average students’ growth during the school year until 4th grade in math and 5th grade in reading. “In theory, if you slow the kids down long enough, eventually the curriculum will catch up with them. It’s kind of sad,” Rambo-Hernandez said.

The growth study looked at top performers, whether or not they had been in gifted programs. And as other studies at the meeting suggest, both identification and services can be spotty for academically gifted students.

Better Identification?

Academically gifted students aren’t just further ahead than their classmates; research suggests they learn new concepts faster and differently. Yet districts rely on academic performance to identify gifted students, which can lead them to overlook students with disabilities and those from disadvantaged groups with less opportunity to learn.

Scott Peters, an associate education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and colleagues including Rambo-Hernandez, looked at the slowly growing trend to use district- or school-building-level comparison groups rather than national norms to identify academically advanced students while taking into account their local access to resources and challenging coursework. The reasoning goes that comparing students nationwide favors students from wealthier families and school districts that likely had more educational supports before and in the early years of school.

Using local comparison groups “is a way to maintain diversity without having to rely on something that’s really race or ethnicity-specific for legal reasons, and it works fairly well,” Peters said.

They analyzed test data for more than 3.3 million 3rd graders in 10,000 schools across 10 states: California, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, South Carolina, Washington, and Wisconsin from 2007 to 2016. They compared the percentage of students from different racial and socioeconomic groups who would have been identified as gifted in each school had their district identified students at the top 5 percent or 15 percent of national-, district-, or school-level test performance.

Using more local-level test data did help compensate for school-level differences in students’ opportunity to learn, they found. Using the top 5 percent of students in reading at each school boosted the number of Latino students identified in reading and math by more than 150 percent. Black students were identified at more than triple the rate in reading and four times the rate in math, Peters said. Meanwhile, gifted identification rates for white and Asian students declined, though still stayed disproportionately high compared to their share of the student body.

But there’s a catch: Using school-based comparison groups only works in districts with “extreme racial segregation” in schools, Peters said. “The schools that are perfectly integrated try to use within-building norms and have no effect whatsoever,” he said.

Within-school gaps in preschool preparation and course tracking often mean that gifted programs within the same school often end up concentrating higher-income, white, and Asian-American students also.

Advanced Curriculum Lacking

Even after students are identified for gifted education, their enrichment often doesn’t align to their needs.

University of Connecticut researchers looked at three states, all of which are considered ahead of the curve for requiring that academically gifted students be both identified and served, and for tracking the district programs and student achievement of gifted students over time. They collected state and district administrative data, surveyed 2,250 schools, and visited 40 individual programs.

More than 90 percent of the districts that they studied separately identified students for being advanced in reading and language arts, and more than 85 percent identified advanced students in math, according to Rashea Hamilton, a postdoctoral researcher at UConn’s National Center for Research on Gifted Education. Yet little more than one in 10 districts used a reading curriculum designed for gifted students, and significantly fewer did so in math.

“That’s something that tends to get lost,” said D. Betsy McCoach, an education measurement and evaluation professor at the University of Connecticut and study co-author. “A kid who learns more quickly can get through the curriculum at a much faster pace.”

Researchers found in math, 62 percent to 69 percent of districts reported their curriculum focused on content above students’ grade level, and 54 percent to 69 percent of districts did so in reading. But only about half of districts said their gifted curricula moved at a faster pace in math, and significantly fewer did so in reading.

“It’s definitely easier to accelerate in math,” McCoach said. “You can be an awesome reader in 1st grade, but you’re not going to give a 1st grader [George Orwell’s novel] Animal Farm even if they could read it. There’s an asynchrony between what you have the maturity to handle, literature-wise, and what you can read and comprehend.”

Regardless of whether students were identified as gifted in reading or math, their enrichment tended to focus on “process skills” such as critical thinking, problem-solving, or creativity. In most districts, the choice of what to teach fell mostly or completely to individual teachers and varied widely from school to school.

Those findings may help explain a 2012 national study by Adelson and McCoach that found attending gifted education in kindergarten through grade 5 had no benefit for students in overall math or reading achievement.

Taking the Long View

One study did provide reason for optimism, though. Vanderbilt University’s Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth has been tracking 700 highly gifted students—the top 1 percent or higher in math achievement—for 45 years and counting.

In its latest report, researchers found that patterns of these students’ academic abilities and their social, aesthetic, and other interests at age 13 were better predictors than ability alone of what fields they entered and whether they achieved “eminence,” such as becoming CEO of a Fortune 500 company, a tenured law or research professor, or a military leader, by age 50.

“Individual ability is important [for eminence in a field], but the ability pattern matters,” said David Lubinski, a co-director of the study. “On the values inventory, if you scored high on theoretical interests and high on math ability, and relatively low on social and religious values, you’re more likely to become a physicist or engineer. If you scored high on aesthetic and verbal ability, you’re more likely to become a humanist. People who are CEOs of big organizations, scored high on reasoning and economic values, and less on theoreticals.”

The takeaway for educators, he said, is the importance of tailoring education to students’ interests as well as their abilities, and not forcing them to focus on, say, entering a science field because they are skilled in science or math.

“These precocious kids are brought to the attention of teachers because they are so conspicuously talented, like a 7-foot-8-inch high school freshman will stick out to the basketball coach,” Lubinski said. “But there are a lot of tall kids who don’t care to play basketball, thank you very much, and there are math-precocious kids who aren’t interested in being a physicist, but in fighting terrorism or managing other organizations.

“People sometimes think that’s a waste,” he said, “but when we look where they are going, these kids are not not developing their talents; they are developing their talents in other areas. It’s important to let kids keep their options open.”

A version of this article appeared in the April 17, 2019 edition of Education Week as Studies Show How Schools Hinder or Help Gifted Students

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Who Are The 'Gifted And Talented' And What Do They Need?

Anya Kamenetz

Ron Turiello's daughter, Grace, seemed unusually alert even as a newborn.

At 7 months or so, she showed an interest in categorizing objects: She'd take a drawing of an elephant in a picture book, say, and match it to a stuffed elephant and a realistic plastic elephant.

At 5 or 6 years old, when snorkeling with her family in Hawaii, she identified a passing fish correctly as a Heller's barracuda, then added, "Where are the rest? They usually travel in schools."

With a child so bright, some parents might assume that she'd do great in any school setting, and pretty much leave it at that. But Turiello was convinced she needed a special environment, in part because of his own experience. He scored very high on IQ tests as a child, but almost dropped out of high school. He says he was bored, unmotivated, socially isolated.

How The U.S. Is Neglecting Its Smartest Kids

"I took a swing at the teacher in second grade because she was making fun of my vocabulary," he recalls. "I would get bad grades because I never did my homework. I could have ended up a really well-read homeless person."

Turiello, now an attorney, and his wife, Margaret Caruso, have two children who attend a private school in Sunnyvale, Calif., exclusively for the gifted. It's called Helios, and it uses project-based learning, groups children by ability not age, and creates an individualized learning plan for each student. For Turiello, the biggest benefits to Grace, now 11, and son Marcello, 7, are social and emotional. "They don't have to pretend to be something they're not," says Turiello. "If they can be among peers and be themselves, that can really change their lives."

Estimates vary, but many say there are around 3 million students in K-12 classrooms nationwide who could be considered academically gifted and talented. The education they get is the subject of a national debate about what our public schools owe to each child in the post-No Child Left Behind era.

When it comes to gifted children, there are three big questions: How to define them, how to identify them and how best to serve them.

Skip A Grade? Start Kindergarten Early? It's Not So Easy

1. How do you define giftedness?

One of the most popular definitions, dating to the early 1990s, is "asynchronous development." That means, roughly, a student whose mental capacities develop ahead of chronological age. This concept matches the most popular tests of giftedness: IQ tests. Scores are indexed to age, with 100 as the average; a 6 year old who gives answers characteristic of a 12 year old would have an IQ of 200.

But there are problems with this framework. No 6-year-old is truly mentally identical to a 12-year-old. He or she may be brilliant at mathematics but lack background knowledge or impulse control.

In addition, IQ tests become less useful as children get older because there is less "headroom" on the test, especially for those who are already high scorers. "It's like measuring a 6-foot person with a 5-foot ruler," says Linda Silverman, an educational psychologist and founder of the Institute for the Study of Advanced Development.

Recent intelligence research de-emphasizes IQ alone and focuses on social and emotional factors.

"There's research that these other things like motivation and grit can take you to the same exact academic outcomes as someone with a higher IQ but without those things," says Scott Barry Kaufman, a psychologist who studies intelligence and creativity at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the book Ungifted . "That's a really important finding that is just totally ignored. Our country has a narrow view of what counts as merit."

Of course, as the definitions get broader, the measurements get more subjective and thus, perhaps, less useful. Some centers for gifted children put out checklists of "giftedness" so broad that any proud parent would be hard-pressed not to recognize her child. Things like: "Has a vivid imagination." "Good sense of humor." "Highly sensitive."

1(a). How many students should be designated gifted?

It can be useful for education policy purposes to think about giftedness as it relates to the rest of the special education spectrum. Silverman argues that just as children with IQ scores two full standard deviations below the norm need special classrooms and extra resources, those who score two standard deviations above the norm need the same. By her lights, the population we should be focusing on is the top 2.5 percent to 3 percent of achievers, not the top 5 to 10 percent.

Scott Peters disagrees. He's a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater who prepares teachers for gifted certifications. He says the question that every teacher and every school should be asking is, "How will we serve the students who already know what I'm covering today?"

In a school where most children are in remediation, he argues, a child who is simply performing on grade level may need special attention.

2. How do you identify gifted students?

The most common answer nationwide is: First, by teacher and/or parent nomination. After that come tests.

Minority and free-reduced lunch students are extremely underrepresented in gifted programs nationwide. The problem starts with that first step. Less-educated or non-English-speaking parents may not be aware of gifted program opportunities. Pre-service teachers, says Peters, typically get one day of training on gifted students, which may not prepare them to recognize giftedness in its many forms.

Research shows that screening every child , rather than relying on nominations, produces far more equitable outcomes.

Tests have their problems, too, says Kaufman. IQ and other standardized tests produce results that can be skewed by background cultural knowledge, language learner status and racial and social privilege. Even nonverbal tasks like puzzles are influenced by class and cultural background.

Using a single test-score cutoff as the criteria is common but not considered best practice.

In addition, the majority of districts in the U.S. test children for these programs before the third grade. Experts worry that identifying children only at the outset of school can be a problem, because abilities change over time, and the practice favors students who have an enriched environment at home.

Experts prefer the use of multiple criteria and multiple opportunities. Portfolios or auditions, interviews or narrative profiles may be part of the process.

3. How do you best serve gifted students?

This is the biggest controversy in gifted education. Peters says many districts focus their resources on identifying gifted or advanced learners, while offering little or nothing to serve them.

"There are cases where parents spend years advocating for students, kids get multiple rounds of testing, and at the end of the day they're provided with a little bit of differentiation or an hour of resource-room time in the course of a week," he says. "That's not sufficient for a fourth-grader, say, who needs to take geometry."

While this emphasis on diagnosis over treatment might seem paradoxical, it's compliant with the law:

In most states the law governs the identification of gifted students. But only 27 percent of districts surveyed in 2013 report a state law about how to group these students, whether in a self-contained program, or pulled out into a resource room for a single subject or offered differentiation within a classroom. And almost no states have laws mandating anything about the curriculum for gifted students.

In addition to a need to move faster and delve deeper, students whose intellectual abilities or interests don't match those of their peers often have special social and emotional needs.

"I believe that every single day in school a gifted child has the right to learn something new — not to help the teacher," Silverman says. "And to be protected from bullying, teasing and abuse."

Helping gifted students may or may not take many more resources. But it does require a shift in mindset to the idea that "every child deserves to be challenged," as Ron Turiello says.

That's why, paradoxically, many of the gifted education experts I interviewed didn't like the label "gifted." "In a perfect world, every student would have an IEP," says Kaufman.

As it happens, federal education policy is currently being reconfigured around some version of that idea.

"The whole NCLB era, and really back to the first Elementary and Secondary Education Act in the 1960s, was about getting kids to grade level, to minimal proficiency," says Peters. "There seems to be a change in belief now — that you need to show growth in every student."

That means, instead of just focusing on the 50 percent of kids who are below average, teachers should be responsible for the half who are above average, too. "That's huge. It's hard to articulate how big of a sea change that is."

Correction Oct. 2, 2015

A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Ron Turiello helped found Helios School. Turiello is a former board member at the school.

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Neag School of Education

Renzulli Center for Creativity, Gifted Education, and Talent Development

Reflections on the education of gifted and talented students in the twentieth century: milestones in the development of talent and gifts in young people, sally m. reis university of connecticut professor, educational psychology, university of connecticut president of the national association for gifted children.

In the recently released federal report on the status of education for our nation’s most talented students entitled National Excellence, A Case for Developing America’s Talent (O’Connell-Ross, l993), a quiet crisis is described in the education of talented students in the United States. The report clearly indicates the absence of attention paid to this population: “Despite sporadic attention over the years to the needs of bright students, most of them continue to spend time in school working well below their capabilities. The belief espoused in school reform that children from all economic and cultural backgrounds must reach their full potential has not been extended to America’s most talented students. They are underchallenged and therefore underachieve” (p. 5). The report further indicates that our nation’s talented students are offered a less rigorous curriculum, read fewer demanding books, and are less prepared for work or postsecondary education than top students in many other industrialized countries. Given this depressing appraisal, it seems a timely endeavor to reflect upon the most important accomplishments in the field of gifted education in the twentieth century. The following accomplishments emerge as major accomplishments on my list.

For many years, psychometricians and psychologists, following in the footsteps of Lewis Terman in 1916, equated giftedness with high IQ. This “legacy” survives to the present day, in that giftedness and high IQ continue to be equated in some conceptions of giftedness. Since that early time, however, other researchers (e.g., Cattell, Guilford, and Thurstone) have argued that intellect cannot be expressed in such a unitary manner, and have suggested more multifaceted approaches to intelligence (Wallace & Pierce, 1992). Research conducted in the 1980s and 1990s has provided data which support notions of multiple components to intelligence. This is particularly evident in the reexamination of “giftedness” by Sternberg and Davidson (1986) in their edited Conceptions of Giftedness . The 16 different conceptions of giftedness presented (those of Albert and Runco; Bamberger; Borkowski and Peck; Csikszentmihalyi and Robinson; Davidson; Feldhusen; Feldman and Benjamin; Gallagher and Courtwright; Gruber; Haensly, Reynolds, and Nash; Jackson and Butterfield; Renzulli; Stanley and Benbow; Sternberg; Tannenbaum; and Walters and Gardner), although distinct, are interrelated in several ways. Most of the investigators define giftedness in terms of multiple qualities, not all of which are intellectual. IQ scores are often viewed as inadequate measures of giftedness. Motivation, high self-concept, and creativity are key qualities in many of these broadened conceptions of giftedness (Siegler & Kotovsky, 1986).

Howard Gardner’s (1983) theory of multiple intelligences (MI) and Joseph Renzulli’s (1978) “three ring” definition of gifted behavior serve as precise examples of multifaceted and expanded conceptualizations of intelligence and giftedness. Gardner’s definition of an intelligence is “the ability to solve problems, or create products, that are valued within one or more cultural settings” (Gardner, 1993, p. x). Within his MI theory, he articulates at least seven specific intelligences: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. Gardner believes that people are much more comfortable using the term “talents” and that “intelligence” is generally reserved to describe linguistic or logical “smartness”; however, he does not believe that certain human abilities should arbitrarily qualify as “intelligence” over others (e.g., language as an intelligence vs. dance as a talent) (Gardner, 1993).

Renzulli’s (1978) definition, which defines gifted behaviors rather than gifted individuals, is composed of three components as follows:

Characteristics which may be manifested in Renzulli’s three clusters are presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Taxonomy of Behavioral Manifestations of Giftedness According to Renzulli’s “Three-ring” Definition of Gifted Behaviors

• high levels of abstract thought
• adaptation to novel situations
• rapid and accurate retrieval of information

Above Average Ability (specific)

• applications of general abilities to specific area of knowledge
• capacity to sort out relevant from irrelevant information
• capacity to acquire and use advanced knowledge and strategies while pursuing a problem

Task Commitment

• capacity for high levels of interest, enthusiasm
• hard work and determination in a particular area
• self-confidence and drive to achieve
• ability to identify significant problems within an area of study
• setting high standards for one’s work
• fluency, flexibility and originality of thought
• open to new experiences and ideas
• willing to take risks
• sensitive to aesthetic characteristics

(adapted from Renzulli & Reis, 1997, p. 9)

The United States federal government also subscribed to a multifaceted approach to giftedness as early as 1972 when the Marland Report definition was passed (Public Law 91-230, section 806). The Marland , or “U.S. Department of Education,” definition has dominated most states’ definitions of giftedness and talent (Passow & Rudnitski, 1993). The most recent federal definition was cited in the Jacob K. Javitz Gifted and Talented Students Education Act of 1988, and is discussed in the most recent national report on the state of gifted and talented education:

Though many school districts adopt this or other broad definitions as their philosophy, others still only pay attention to “intellectual” ability when both identifying and serving students. And, even though we have more diverse definitions of giftedness and intelligence today, many students with gifts and talents go unrecognized and underserved (Hishinuma & Tadaki, 1996; Kloosterman, 1997) perhaps due to the differing characteristics found in intellectually gifted, creatively gifted, and diverse gifted learners.Common themes identified by the implicit theorists include the need to identify the domain that serves as the basis of one’s definition, whether individual or societal; the essential role that cognitive abilities and motivation play in giftedness; the importance of the developmental course of one’s talents for whether or how they are expressed; and the inevitability of how one’s abilities come together or coalesce as affected by societal forces (Sternberg & Davidson, 1986, pp. 6–7).

Sternberg’s explicit theoretic approach emphasizes three aspects of intellectual giftedness: the superiority of mental processes, including metacomponents relating intelligence to the internal world of the individual; superiority in dealing with relative novelty and in automating information processing, an experiential aspect relating cognition to one’s level of experience in applying cognitive processes in particular tasks or situations; and superiority in applying the processes of intellectual functioning, as mediated by experience, to functioning in real-world contexts, a contextual aspect. Sternberg believes that “the outward manifestation of giftedness is in superior adaptation to, shaping of and selection of environments” (1986, p. 9) and would agree with Renzulli and Tannenbaum that it can be attained in a number of ways, differing from one person to another. Recurrent themes among the explicit theorists include questioning the cognitive bases of giftedness-asking “what is it that a person can do well to be identified by this term” (Sternberg & Davidson, 1986, p. 10)-and emphasizing the importance of theory-driven empirical research as the primary means for advancing our understanding of giftedness (pp. 10–11).

Feldman (1986), like Csikszentmihalyi and Robinson, views development as a movement through a sequence of stages. Feldman, however, believes that the development of giftedness is domain specific, observing that the movement through the levels of a domain not mastered by all individuals includes three forms: the rate at which one moves to the level of mastery, the number of levels one achieves, and the domain one selects. According to Feldman, giftedness “is the outcome of a sustained coordination among sets of intersecting forces, including historical and cultural as well as social and individual qualities and characteristics” (p. 303). Walters and Gardner (1986) add the concept of crystallizing experiences that is derived from Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. According to Gardner (1983), all normal individuals are capable of seven forms of intellectual accomplishment: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. These multiple intelligences manifest themselves early in life as abilities to process information in certain ways. During crystallized experiences, latent skills of underutilized intelligence may be activated, and an individual’s major life activities may change as a result of such an experience.

Bloom and his associates at the University of Chicago also engaged in a study of the development of talent in children, examining the processes by which young people who reached the highest levels of accomplishment developed their capabilities. Groups studied included concert pianists, sculptors, research mathematicians, research neurologists, Olympic swimmers, and tennis champions who attained these high levels of accomplishment before the age of 35. According to Bloom and his associates, the following factors play a role in the development of talent: the home environment, which develops the work ethic and the importance of doing one’s best at all times; the encouragement of parents in a highly approved talent field; the involvement of families and teachers; and the presence of achievement and progress, which are necessary to maintain a commitment to talent over a decade of increasingly difficult learning (Bloom, 1985, pp. 508–509).

The importance of development throughout the lifespan of the individual is reinforced by each of these developmental theorists, as is the domain-specific nature of giftedness. Gifted individuals are seen as those who can excel usually in one domain, providing that the environmental factors allow this excellence to manifest itself. These developmental psychologists also emphasize the insights gained from intensive case study research and qualitative or naturalistic methodology.

The accomplishments of the last 40 years in the education of gifted students since the launching of Sputnik in the United States should not be underestimated; the field of education of the gifted, although still historically in its infancy, has emerged as strong, visible, and viable. The most recent comprehensive United States Gifted and Talented Education Report (Council of State Directors, 1994) shows that 47 states, plus Puerto Rico and Guam, have recognized education of the gifted and talented through specific legislation, and the same number of states have assigned state department of education staff to leadership positions in this area. Twenty-nine states have either a policy or position statement from the state board of education supporting the education of the gifted and talented. The report also shows that since 1963, when Pennsylvania first required services for the gifted and talented, 24 other states and Guam have implemented a mandate for services. Twenty-two other states that do not have a mandate support permissive (discretionary) programs for the gifted and talented. This growth has not been constant, however, researchers and scholars in the field have pointed to various high and low points of national interest and commitment to educating the gifted and talented (Gallagher, 1979; Renzulli, 1980; Tannenbaum, 1983). Gallagher described the struggle between support and apathy for special programs for this population as having roots in historical tradition-the battle against an aristocratic elite and our concomitant belief in egalitarianism. Tannenbaum portrays two peak periods of interest in the gifted as the five years following Sputnik in 1957 and the last half of the decade of the 1970s. Tannenbaum described a valley of neglect between the peaks in which the public focused its attention on the disadvantaged and the handicapped. “The cyclical nature of interest in the gifted is probably unique in American education. No other special group of children has been alternately embraced and repelled with so much vigor by educators and laypersons alike” (Tannenbaum, 1983, p.16). Renzulli (1980) raised similar concerns when comparing the gifted child movement with the progressive education movement of the 1930s and 1940s, stating that the field has been alternately embraced and rejected by general educators, parents, and laypeople, and he offers suggestions for dealing with some of the criticisms leveled at proponents of a differentiated education for gifted and talented students. “Simply stated, the field of education for the gifted and talented must develop as strong and defensible a rationale for the practices it advocates as has been developed for those things that it is against” (p. 3).

Excellent educational research continues to be conducted by scholars in the field and at research-based university programs. In the mid-seventies, only one programming model had been developed for gifted programs; by 1986, a textbook on systems and models for gifted programs included 15 models for elementary and secondary programs (Renzulli, 1986b). The Jacob Javits Legislation passed in 1990 by the federal government resulted in the creation of a National Research Center for the Gifted and Talented which involves three universities (The University of Connecticut and Yale University, state departments of education in every state and a consortium of over 300 school districts from across the country.

Too often, the majority of young people participating in gifted and talented programs across the country continue to represent the majority culture in our society. Few doubts exist regarding the reasons that economically disadvantaged and other minority group students are underrepresented in gifted programs. For example, Frasier and Passow (1994) indicate that identification and selection procedures may be ineffective and inappropriate for the identification of these young people. They also indicate that limited referrals and nominations of students who are minorities or from other disadvantaged groups affect their eventual placement in programs. Test bias and inappropriateness have been mentioned as a reason as the continued reliance on traditional identification approaches. Groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in gifted programs could be better served, according to Frasier and Passow (1994), if the following elements are considered: new constructs of giftedness, attention to cultural and contextual variability, the use of more varied and authentic assessment, performance identification, identification through learning opportunities, and attention to both absolute attributes of giftedness, the traits, aptitudes, and behaviors universally associated with talent as well as the specific behaviors that represent different manifestations of gifted potential and performance as a consequence of the social and cultural contexts in which they occur (p. xvii).

In addition to students from economically disadvantaged populations, various minority and cultural groups, as well as gifted students with various disabilities such as learning disabilities, visual and hearing impairments, and physical handicaps. Another group of students who are traditionally underrepresented in gifted programs are females who have potential in mathematics and science, as well as gifted females who achieve in school but later underachieve in life (Reis, 1987). Special programs, strategies, and identification procedures have been suggested for many of these groups, however, much progress still remains to be made to achieve equity for these underrepresented groups.

In the last decade many promising practices have been implemented in the education of gifted and talented students. More primary and secondary programs have been developed since the first programming model, The Enrichment Triad Model (Renzulli, 1977) was developed for gifted students. Other programming models such as The Purdue Three-Stage Enrichment Model (Feldhusen & Kolloff, l986); Talents Unlimited (Schlichter, 1986); The Autonomous Learner Model (Betts, l986) are also widely used throughout the country. National programs such as Future Problem Solving, which was conceived by Dr. E. Paul Torrance, have taught hundreds of thousands of students to apply problem-solving techniques to the real problems of our society. Although not developed solely for gifted students, Future Problem Solving is widely used in gifted programs because of the curricular freedom associated with these programs.

The Future Problem Solving Program is a year-long program in which teams of four students use a six-step problem solving process to solve complex scientific and social problems of the future such as the overcrowding of prisons or the greenhouse effect. At regular intervals throughout the year, the teams mail their work to evaluators, who review it and return it with their suggestions for improvement. As the year progresses, the teams become increasingly more proficient at problem solving. The Future Problem Solving Program takes students beyond memorization. The program challenges students to apply information they have learned to some of the most complex issues facing society. They are asked to think, to make decisions, and, in some instances, to carry out their solutions.

A national program called Talent Search actively recruits and provides testing and program opportunities for mathematically precocious youth. Talent Search is an annual effort to identify 12-14 year old students who score in the top five percent of the country in mathematics on the SAT math test. These students generally have scored highly in other standardized tests and are recommended by teachers or counselors to take the SAT-Math. If they do well on this test, they are eligible for multiple options including summer programs, grade skipping, completing two or more years of a math subject in one year, taking college courses, or other options. Eleven states have created separate schools for talented students in math and science such as The North Carolina School for Math and Science. Some large school districts have established magnet schools to serve the needs of talented students. In New York City, for example, the Bronx High School of Science has helped to nurture and develop mathematical and scientific talent for decades, producing internally known scientists and Nobel laureates. In other states, Governor’s Schools provide advanced, intensive summer programs in a variety of content areas. It is clear, however, that these opportunities touch a small percentage of students who could benefit from them.

Within the schools that have gifted programs, limited options often exist. Resource room programs in which a student leaves his/her regular classroom and spends a limited amount of time doing independent study or becoming involved in advanced research in a resource room for gifted students with a teacher are commonly found. Independent study projects provide talented students with opportunities to engage in pursuing individual interests and advanced content. Many local districts have created innovative mentorship programs which pair a bright student with a high school student or adult who has an interest in the same area as the student. Some schools use cluster grouping which allows students who are gifted in a certain content area to be grouped in one classroom with other students who are talented in the same area. Therefore, one fifth grade teacher may have six students who are advanced in mathematics in a classroom instead of having these six students distributed among four different fifth grade classrooms. Some schools acknowledge that they can do little different for gifted students within the school day and provide after school enrichment programs or send talented students to Saturday programs offered by museums, science centers, or local universities. Unfortunately, many of these promising strategies seem insignificant when compared with the plight of thousands of bright students who still sit in classrooms across the country bored, unmotivated, and unchallenged.

Acceleration, once a standard practice in our country, is too often dismissed by teachers and administrators as an inappropriate practice for a variety of reasons, including scheduling problems, concerns about the social effects of grade skipping, and others. Many forms of acceleration hold promise for gifted students including enabling precocious students to enter kindergarten or first grade early, grade skipping, and early entrance to college are not commonly used or encouraged by most school districts. And in many schools, the pervasive influence of anti-intellectualism that affects our society has a two pronged effect. First, policy makers do little to encourage excellence in our schools and less and less attention is paid to intellectual growth. Second, peer pressure is exerted on gifted students. The labels such as “smarty-pants” commonly used to describe bright students in the fifties and sixties has been replaced by more negative labels such as “nerd”, “dweeb” or “dork”. Our brightest students often learn not to answer in class, to stop raising their hands and to minimize their abilities to avoid peer pressures.

A number of challenging curriculum options in science and language arts have been developed under the auspices of the federal Javits Education Act mentioned earlier. Several national programs have been developed or implemented for high ability students in many districts, regional service centers, and states. Many high ability students have the opportunity to participate in History Day in which students work individually or in small groups on an historical event, person from the past, or invention related to a theme that is determined each year. Using primary source data including diaries or other sources gathered in libraries, museums, and interviews, students prepare research papers, projects, media presentations or performances as entries. These entries are judged by local historians, educators, and other professionals and state finalists compete with winners from other states each June. Information about History Day can be obtained from state historical societies. Many model projects such as mentorships, Saturday programs, summer internships, and computer camps that are of extremely high quality continue to be implemented.

Much that has been learned and developed in gifted programs can offer exciting, creative alternatives in instruction and curriculum for all students. A rather impressive menu of exciting curricular adaptations, independent study and thinking skill strategies, grouping options, and enrichment strategies have been developed in gifted programs which could be used to improve schools. The Schoolwide Enrichment Model (Renzulli & Reis, 1985: 1007) has been field tested and implemented by hundreds of school districts across the country for the last nine years. Our experiences with schoolwide enrichment led us to realize that when an effective approach to enrichment is implemented, all students in the school benefit and the entire school begins to improve. This led to the development of Schools for Talent Development (Renzulli, 1994). This approach seeks to apply strategies used in gifted programs to the entire school population, emphasizing talent development in all students through a variety of acceleration and enrichment strategies that have been discussed earlier. Not all students can, of course, participate in all advanced opportunities but many can work far beyond what they are currently asked to do. It is clear that our most advanced students need different types of educational experiences than they are currently receiving and that without these services, talents may not be nurtured in many American students, especially those who attend schools in which survival is a major daily goal.

Specialists in the area of gifted education have also gained expertise in adjusting the regular curriculum to meet the needs of advanced students in a variety of ways including: accelerating content, incorporating a thematic approach, and substituting more challenging textbooks or assignments. The present range of instructional techniques used in most classrooms observed by Goodlad (1984) and his colleagues is vastly different than what is recommended in many gifted programs today. The flexibility in grouping that is encouraged in many gifted programs might also be helpful in other types of educational settings.

We can, therefore, make every attempt to share with other educators the technology we have gained in teaching students process skills, modifying the regular curriculum, and helping students become producers of knowledge (Renzulli, 1977). We can extend enrichment activities and provide staff development in the many principles that guide our programming models. Yet, without the changes at the local, state and national policy making levels that will alter the current emphasis on raising test scores and purchasing unchallenging, flat and downright sterile textbooks, our efforts may be insignificant.

These questions have led us to advocate a fundamental change in the ways the concept of giftedness should be viewed in the future. Except for certain functional purposes related mainly to professional focal points (i.e., research, training, legislation) and to ease-of-expression, we believe that labeling students as “the gifted” is counter-productive to the educational efforts aimed at providing supplementary educational experiences for certain students in the general school population. We believe that our field should shift its emphasis from a traditional concept of “being gifted” (or not being gifted) to a concern about the development of gifted behaviors in those youngsters who have the highest potential for benefiting from special educational services. This slight shift in terminology might appear insignificant, but we believe that it has implications for the entire way that we think about the concept of giftedness and the ways in which we should structure our identification and programming endeavors. This change in terminology may also provide the flexibility in both identification and programming endeavors that will encourage the inclusion of at-risk and underachieving students in our programs. If that occurs, not only will we be giving these high potential youngsters an opportunity to participate, we will also help to eliminate the charges of elitism and bias in grouping that are sometimes legitimately directed at some gifted programs.

We cannot forget that our schools should be places that seek to develop talents in children. We won’t produce future Thomas Edisons or Marie Curies by forcing them to spend large amounts of their science and mathematics classes tutoring students who don’t understand the material. A student who is tutoring others in a cooperative learning situation in mathematics may refine some of his or her basic skill processes, but this type of situation does not provide the level of challenge necessary for the most advanced types of involvement in the subject, nor for inspiring our young people to strive to develop their talents.

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50 Tips, Tricks and Ideas for Teaching Gifted Students

Use these ideas to engage the high-level thinkers in your classroom.

Gifted kids can be a joy to teach when you know how to identify what engages them. These 50 tips and tricks come from my own experience and from around the Web. They’re good to have in your bag of tricks whether you’re a newbie or an old hand at teaching these high-level thinkers.

1. Know Their Interests

Every year, I start by having my students complete an interest inventory . This helps me ensure that curriculum is personalized to their interests.

2. Try Book Talks

Share what you are reading with gifted students. Often, these students experience a reading lag where they can’t find a sweet spot because it is hard for high-ability students to understand what is both challenging and appropriate.

3. Keep Them Active

Gifted students often need to have the ability to move when learning … pacing, flapping and bouncing are parts of their thinking process.

4. Offer Flexible Seating

A window seat is my favorite place to read, so I keep that in mind when offering seating. Try to offer different seating options for students: beanbag chairs, carpet squares, pillows, director chairs … the list can go on and on.

SOURCE:  kindergartenisgrrreat.blogspot.com

5. Model Social Situations

Social situations can be challenging for some gifted students as their ability to understand social cues can be underdeveloped. Team up with other teachers to model the proper way to start conversations.

6. Share Current Events

Current events are important to incorporate into gifted programming. We want these students to be thinking about how they can use their talents to solve real-world problems.

7. Look for the Helpers

As important as current events are, it is also just as important to understand that gifted students internalize global happenings on a very personal level. Kids do not have the experience with the world to understand that despite there being a war or attack, there are still good things happening in the world. 

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8. Allow for Groupings

Not all gifted students are meant to be the project manager. Allow students the opportunity to work alone or in a group. Even cross-grade groupings work well with gifted students.

9. Mind the Child Labor Laws

Gifted students who finish early should not automatically be the teacher’s helper. Gifted students can be some of the worst students to assist others because their brains often work very differently. Having a gifted child help a student who is struggling may do more harm than good.

10. Create a Makerspace

My grandmother always said, idle hands are the devil’s workshop … so keep some key things in the back for busy hands. LEGO bricks, cardboard and masking tape, and Snap Circuits are some of my favorites!

11. Introduce Minecraft Edu

Don’t be scared to incorporate students’ passions and interests. I once had a student who never wanted to practice spelling words until I told him he could practice them in Minecraft. Minecraft Edu has lots of great ways teachers can implement this engaging game in the classroom.

SOURCE:  http://education.minecraft.net/

12. Give Them End Dates

Provide gifted students with clear endpoints on projects and assignments. Gifted students can create unusually high expectations and never see an end in sight; a book reflection can easily become a 10-page paper, a PowerPoint can become an intensive course on the topic. Letting students know where to stop can be helpful.

13. Set Realistic Goals 

Use FutureMe.org and have students write a letter to their future selves. Once students have written the letter, you can set the date for it to be sent to their inbox. What a great way for students to set goals and create natural check-in points.

14. Teach Decision-Making

Gifted students can have a huge case of FOMO: fear of missing out. They understand that decisions have consequences, and sometimes they need to be given an inordinate amount of details about their options. Allow for the gifted student to fully understand the pros and cons of a decision.

15. Be Patient

Gifted students are processing a lot in their minds. Be patient and give them the time to reflect on what they need to come to a consensus they can live with.

16. Assign Expiration Dates

My gifted students walk into class with exploding folders and binders. They keep everything because there is a fear of being unprepared. Just like expiration dates for food, think about adding a footer to your handouts: “This handout expires on April 15.”

17. Model Organization Strategies

Or at least model how you organize life. Gifted students like options and seeing how they work in the “real world” is very helpful. I show students how I use notes to organize things , how Google Calendar is my lifeline, and what I do for physical notes. I have used planners in the past and show those examples as well.

We also review different apps that could be helpful. I urge students to find what works for them. No system is not an answer. We all need a system to help us be productive. When I taught younger students, we would all try different systems together as our end-of-the-day procedure.

18. Use Brain Breaks

Offer gifted students a hobby that can help calm their busy minds. Teach them how to Zentangle , breathe, meditate, make friendship bracelets, knit, color—anything that allows for them to focus carefully on details can help them quiet some of the extra noise.

SOURCE:  http://teachertothecore.blogspot.com

19. Explore Their Passions

Some gifted students don’t have a passion yet because they haven’t found it. Provide exposure to as much as possible. TED talks are one way to help students think about different topics. TED even has created teaching enhancements. I heart TED.

20. Read Tons of Biographies

Reading, watching or listening to the lives of others can help gifted students develop a plan of action and see what others did to accomplish goals.

21. Read Lots of Everything

It is true, so many gifted students have found a book that becomes so much a part of them, they can discuss it at length. Bibliotherapy is a great way for students to experience how to deal with issues and learn tactics and strategies.

22. Pre-Assess Them

For the love of anything that is holy, this should probably be no. 1. Research states that most gifted students do not learn new information until January. Don’t make a student who has already mastered a concept sit through the lesson again. 

23. Allow Them to Focus

Let gifted students pursue their interests. If they want to let everything be about dinosaurs, more power to them! We need paleontologists. As mentioned in Outliers , it takes over 10,000 hours to be an expert. To get that many hours on a time card, students have to be allowed to focus.

24. Make Connections

We need to allow students to hyper-focus but also then be the “guide on the side” that helps them make connections from one area to another. Perhaps we can get our dinosaur expert to use Scratch and make a “Dino Dig” math game?

25. Find Mentors

Gifted students need mentors within their interest areas. Mentors can teach students how to navigate through professions and can even be gatekeepers to additional opportunities.

26. Practice Like Professionals

Allow students to practice like the professionals. Use the same processes that professionals use. Looking to try fashion designing? Have students actually sew, measure, use patterns and do the alterations. Visit the American Museum of Natural History’s OLogy interactive site.

27. Locate Authentic Audiences

The work students create should have a real audience and be appreciated by those who authentically would benefit from its completion. Younger students are a great first authentic audience.

28. Put Them in Escape Rooms

If you haven’t heard of these yet, drop everything and head over to http://www.breakoutedu.com/digital/ . These are a great way to curate the knowledge you want your students to gain. 

29. Watch Webinars

You can find webinars on just about any topic that interests your students. If you sign up at Edtech , they will send weekly lists of upcoming professional webinars.

30. Submit Inventions

Inventions are a great way for students to take risks and try different things. I feel like students are more apt to take risks when they are creating something new. Student Inventions for a Better America challenges students to submit an invention that will make the world a better place … and there are winners every month.

31. Try Gamification 

I love  The Mind Research Institute , which challenges students in grades K–12 to design their own mathematical game.

32. Check Out Local Happenings

Do you live in the middle of nowhere? Me too! But I was surprised to learn there were still a TON of events happening on the weekends. If you are in the urban areas, you are rich in opportunities. Look to local libraries, museums or universities.

33. Send Them to Summer Camp

Some of my closest childhood friendships started at summer camp. These times allowed for encouragement and allowed kids to be nurtured in an environment where trying something new was the goal. Summer camp allowed me to be myself and try new things.

34. Solve Local Problems

“With great power comes great responsibility,” says one of our favorite superheroes, and he is correct—kindness counts. We need to do good with the gifts and talents we have been given. Give gifted students the opportunity to solve local problems and see the need for change in their own community. Allow a book to inspire this mission: Wonder , Kindness Club , or The Summer I Changed the World in 65 Days .

35. Develop Book Clubs

What do friends all have in common? Interests!! We are attracted to those who think similarly and those who challenge our beliefs. Book clubs make for a great space for likeminded students to come together to discuss a common theme … in this case a book, which serves as a great discussion starter.

36. Allow for Voice and Choice

How many of you hated a certain book in high school only to read it as an adult and see how wrong you were? The moment we lost choice (of what to read in this case), we also lost joy. Allowing gifted students to have choice in the classroom allows them to feel empowered and engaged. Choices do not need to be huge either, small choices are just as important.

37. Raise the Bar

No one wants to only be the big fish in a small pond. We want to be around people who will make us better and want to achieve more. Allow your gifted student to be challenged by participating in academic competitions such as National History Day. Your students will see what true competition is.

38. Brainstorm

This is one of the best ways to develop critical thinking. Show a picture of clouds … what do you see? This type of activity develops fluency, elabora tion, originality and abstract thinking, which are all integral parts of being a creative thinker. Try Google’s Quick, Draw!  It’s a great tool for getting students to think rapidly—it’s also a gem for indoor recess.

39. Model Curiosity

When the students ask a question you don’t know, look it up with them. As librarian media specialist Melissa Thom says, “the smartest people are the people who know how to find answers to their own questions.” Follow her on twitter at  @ msthombookitis .

40. Try Flocabulary

Flocabulary creates content-rich raps (yes, as in hip-hop) about just about ANYTHING. There are so many wonderful resources embedded within—contests, lyric labs, lyric notes, connections to primary sources, teacher plans, corresponding handouts, questioning and so much more! This will quickly become your favorite teaching resource. I promise!

41. Let Them Read Below-Level Books

Why do we expect every book gifted students read to be 1.5–2 grade levels above their reading level? I say, if a student is enjoying a book, read it! Yes, challenging books are needed to develop reading ability but don’t discount a book just because it is below a student’s level. Reading a book for a different purpose can increase the difficulty of a book without changing the text.

42. Connect Globally

Global Read Aloud  is a program where one book is used to connect the world. Pernille Ripp founded GRA in 2010 with the simple idea to read a book aloud to her stude nts and during that time try to make as many global connections as possible. This mission has grown exponentially and has reached over two million students. Collaborating with students in other states and countries will help a gifted student think empathetically.

43. Incorporate Mythology

If you know a gifted s tudent, then you know that mythology can be a huge interest—often spurred by the  Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan. Allow students to build a better understanding by incorporating mythology into different curricular units.

This is an authentic way for gifted students to share their reading in a way that we would as adults. Creating readers means treating them like readers—when I finish a book I do not take a comprehension quiz. I talk about it, share it with friends or write about it. Have your students react to reading like real readers. Kidblog is a great tool for creating safe student blogs.

45. Crowdsource

Two heads are better than one! Allow students to go places where they can collaborate. Google Docs is a great place to start, but also explore tools like FlipGrid , a tool that allows students to record and reply to one another.

46. Be a Safe Space

Provide a safe space for gifted students to take risks without being put down. Gifted students are often timid to answer something they are unsure about because of the social stigma attached to not answering correctly. Create a classroom culture where wrong answers become an opportunity to celebrate different thinking. Check out Nancy Anderson’s book, What’s Right About Wrong Answers? Learning Math From Mistakes .

47. Use QR Codes

QR codes add an interactive component to your classroom. Create a QR Code Museum or Gallery or even a QR scavenger hunt on one of your classroom bulletin boards.

48. Write Haikus

A frog jumps into the pond, splash! Silence again. This is Basho Matsuo’s famous haiku. Use haiku as a way to challenge gifted students to summarize chapters, current events, biographies or vocabulary words. Haiku are student-friendly yet force them to be concise and purposeful with their word choice.

49. Change the World

Action is powerful for gifted students. Allowing students to find solutions to problems they see in their school, neighborhood or community will allow them to understand that they can make a difference. Internalizing that they can be the change in the world is transformational. Watch these TED Talks to show them what kids like them are doing to change the world.

50. Record Them

Allow gifted students to record their voices into an app or movie application. Teaching in front of peers is public speaking and that is its own beast. By allowing gifted students to show their work in a way that allows their confidence to be present is a win-win. Explain Everything is a collaborative and interactive whiteboard tool that makes this approach a piece of cake!

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Giftedness is an intellectual ability significantly higher than average. The federal government defines gifted children as “those who give evidence of high achievement capability in such areas as intellectual, creative, artistic, or leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields.” However, there aren’t any national standards for identifying gifted students, and it’s usually left to states or school districts to recognize gifted children and determine what programs best meet their academic needs.

Characteristics of gifted students

Gifted students learn at a faster pace than regular students and also tend to finish their assignments more quickly and crave more intellectually challenging assignments. They also may act out in class if bored or understimulated.  Gifted children span all races, genders, ethnicities and socioeconomic levels. According to the National Association for Gifted Children, six to 10 percent of the student population is academically gifted or talented.

Gifted and talented students in the classroom

Gifted learners are least likely to receive special attention from teachers. Research shows when teachers differentiate instruction, they are most likely to do so with students who are struggling academically, because they perceive this group to be most in need of help. Additionally, not all teachers are prepared to support gifted students. A national study by the Fordham Institute found that 58 percent of teachers have not received training focused on teaching academically advanced students in the past few years.

Lesson plans for gifted and talented students

Here are a few instructional strategies and activities to use with gifted students:

• Design your lessons with Bloom’s Taxonomy in mind . For gifted students, construct activities from the two upper levels: creating and evaluating. For example, activities could include conducting an experiment, designing a game or musical composition or writing an editorial about a current events topic.
• Assign independent projects . When your gifted students finish class assignments early, allow them to work on special projects. Assign topics that are of special interest to your students and have them explore the topic in depth.
• Ask intellectually stimulating questions . When constructing your lesson plan, write questions that are open-ended and require more thoughtful responses.
• Find mentors . Gifted students need guides just like other students. Find an adult who can help your student explore a subject of interest more deeply. This mentor can serve as an advisor, counselor and role model to the student. Ask other teachers and parents for recommendations or contact a local organization.
• Organize cluster groups . Research shows gifted students of the same grade benefit from being grouped together. As a way to combine resources, teachers can shift gifted students from different classrooms into one group to learn about a specific topic in more depth. This method works best with teachers who are specially trained to work with gifted students and have minimal distractions from other students in the class.

Related: 4 Tips for Teaching Gifted and Talented Students

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Home — Essay Samples — Education — Middle School — An Overview of the Gifted and Talented Middle School Students

An Overview of The Gifted and Talented Middle School Students

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By The Learning Network

Welcome to another roundup of student comments on our recent writing prompts .

This week, we asked teenagers whether we should eliminate gifted and talented programs nearly 400 debated the topic. Inspired by an article about a graduate program that focuses solely on the Beatles, we also asked what they would devote a year to studying to if they could choose any subject they liked. And, we invited them to interpret an illustration from the Opinion section that featured an image of a tiny dollar bill.

Thank you to all those who joined the conversation this week from around the world, including teenagers from São Paulo, Brazil ; Valley Stream North High School in Valley Stream, N.Y. ; and Atrisco Heritage Academy High School in Albuquerque .

Please note: Student comments have been lightly edited for length, but otherwise appear as they were originally submitted.

Should We Eliminate Gifted and Talented Programs?

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The conversation was robust. Some students argued that gifted programs were beneficial, while others said they were inherently unfair. Several teenagers made suggestions for improving the selection process and for getting schools to address the needs of all students. Many argued from their own experiences. Here are some highlights.

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The big read: 'excuse me, are you gifted' a deeper look at gifted education and its relevance to society.

• The Gifted Education Programme will be discontinued in its current form to allow more students to benefit from it
• While more students will benefit from the programme, it has reignited a decades-old debate about how giftedness is defined and whether a child can be moulded to be gifted 
• Education experts said that while giftedness is defined differently globally, such children have to have innate intellect and then be nurtured to their full potential 
• It is also a common misconception, they said, that gifted children need less support as such children may display socio-emotional issues if not properly engaged 
• There are also gifted children who are late bloomers as well as those who are gifted in just specific interest areas

SINGAPORE — At work, Ms Neha Dharma is like any of her other colleagues. The 24-year-old Singaporean human resource consultant based in Sydney, Australia does not have all the answers, sometimes makes mistakes and even gets chided by her boss. 

This was perhaps not what her 10-year-old self would have imagined when she was part of a small group of pupils specially selected from Singapore schools to attend the Gifted Education Programme (GEP). 

“We were told (by our teachers) that we’re all gifted... that we should be doing better. I started putting pressure on myself because I slowly started believing this idea that I should be gifted,” said Ms Dharma, noting how the “gifted” label came with unrealistic expectations set not only by teachers and parents, but also herself. 

Nevertheless, she enjoyed the stimulating classes and group projects under the GEP at St Hilda's Primary School — though she didn't do as well as she expected in her Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), getting 253 out of a possible 300 points under the old scoring system. 

Recalling how she was "devastated" at her results, Ms Dharma said: “At that moment, I felt like I had messed up my entire life... I came to the conclusion that I was not gifted like I was told, and I wasted everyone's time and resources.” 

She went on to study at Raffles Girls' School and later graduated from Australia's University of New South Wales in 2022 with a bachelor's degree in commerce.

Now, at the workplace, her "giftedness" is not something she would bring up "because it's weird talking about something that happened so long ago, and I don't think I'm special or gifted".

Ms Neha Dharma was part of a small group of pupils specially selected from Singapore schools to attend the Gifted Education Programme when she was 10 years old.

Similarly, Mr Edric Sng does not consider himself particularly extraordinary but he credits his time in the GEP as having spurred his love for learning.

The 44-year-old pastor of Bethesda (Bedok-Tampines) Church was part of the GEP from 1989 to 1991 at Anglo-Chinese School (Primary), and from 1992 to 1995 at Anglo-Chinese School (Independent). The GEP for secondary school students was discontinued in 2008.

“I remember when learning literature in secondary school, we would act out plays and were allowed to explore the subject beyond just the fixed text,” said Mr Sng, who used to be a news editor. 

“I definitely enjoy learning because of how we were allowed to explore, wrestle with the text and curriculum and satisfy our curiosity.”

Ms Dharma and Mr Sng's experiences are not unique: Many GEPers — as students who have gone through the programme call themselves — have contributed to society in their own ways, even if some of them are quick to downplay their achievements or "giftedness".  

In response to TODAY's queries, the Ministry of Education (MOE) said GEP alumni have made significant contributions to both private and public service, in diverse fields including academia, arts, law, medicine, research, entrepreneurship and technology. It added that some have gained international recognition for their areas of specialisation and many are also active leaders in the community and social sectors.

But what exactly is "giftedness"? How is it measured? Can it be trained or nurtured? What is its relevance to today's educational systems and the workplace? 

The GEP — with all its pros and cons — is once again being dissected after Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced at his inaugural National Day Rally this year that the programme would be discontinued in its current form to benefit more students and meet the development needs of such students. 

Among the changes: Students will be able to join higher-ability programmes from Primary 4 to 6 instead of just one time at Pri 4. The selection process will also incorporate teachers' day-to-day observations and students' work for a “more holistic and comprehensive” understanding of their abilities.

The moves represent a shift in how MOE defines and characterises gifted children. But as some experts pointed out, academic performance still remains central in defining a child’s potential to be stretched further through the GEP.

WHAT MAKES A CHILD ‘GIFTED’?

During a recent science class at St Hilda's Primary, a group of students excitedly raised their hands to answer Mrs Ushanthini Arumugam’s question about how the digestive system works.

A 10-year-old GEP pupil called on to answer replied that it “all ends up as NEWater”, referring to the output of Singapore's wastewater treatment system. 

Mrs Ushanthini, who has been a science GEP teacher for 11 years, told TODAY such a response from students in her GEP class are common as they tend to be quicker in comprehending class materials, show more curiosity than other children and often are aware about global issues.

“They are not limited to print-based text. They try to form relationships with conceived ideas with their own knowledge… and are able to build conceptual connections,” she said.

To engage her GEP students, Mrs Ushanthini says she adopts a knowledge-building teaching approach, which allows her to figure out what her students already know, before addressing any other concepts that they bring up. She also answers anything they are curious about, using it as an opportunity to guide them through the class learning objectives. 

"This knowledge-building culture promotes student agency as students discuss what they want to learn," she explained.

In comparison, students from the three non-GEP higher-ability classes she teaches usually benefits from more “scaffolding” questions and probing to help them arrive at learning objectives. While they are also curious, many are guarded about sharing their knowledge especially when it veers from the topic, she said.

Mrs Ushanthini, who has been a science Gifted Education Programme teacher for 11 years, says she adopts a knowledge-building teaching approach.

In general, higher-ability learners tend to demonstrate a high level of curiosity and creativity and can learn faster than their peers, MOE told TODAY. 

"They find, solve and act on problems more readily and can grasp abstract ideas and make connections between different concepts," it said, adding that these traits are supported by international literature. 

If solely based on Intelligence Quotient (IQ), gifted children are often considered to have an IQ of 130 or higher. The average IQ is 100.

However, education experts noted that giftedness is defined differently around the world and there are other characteristics beyond IQ to be considered.

Associate Professor Jason Tan from the National Institute of Education (NIE), who does research in comparative education and education reform, said that while Singapore has tended to adopt a more academic approach in its definition, some countries take into account different talents such as excellence in the arts and sports.

Even the way gifted students are classified can be different. In Taiwan, its Education Ministry views giftedness as a form of special needs, he said.

“In other words, these children are quite different from the bulk of other children, and need some kind of special services and special activities to suit their giftedness,” said Assoc Prof Tan.

In a 2008 publication, Taiwan’s Education Ministry stated that gifted students are “often a special group of unsatisfied clients who, instead of ‘knowing too little’, know too much and learn too fast”.

Assoc Prof Tan added that growing research on gifted children has also found that giftedness is not universal across various domains. A child might be, for example, gifted in languages but average in mathematics.

Despite the absence of a universal definition, identifying “gifted children” using their own metrics remains important for educational authorities since countries need to invest in their human capital.

Dr Ho Boon Tiong, principal consultant educationist at training and consulting firm ClassPoint Consulting, said: “From an education standpoint, it is worth the investment to ensure no wasted talent. Also, in terms of access and equity, we need to ensure that those with special needs and learning needs on both ends of the spectrum are supported.”

Two child psychologists told TODAY that it is a common misconception that gifted children need less support.

Dr Annabelle Chow, a principal clinical psychologist of Annabelle Psychology and Annabelle Kids pointed out that gifted children need to be appropriately engaged in academic and social settings as well as be encouraged and supported, taking their unique needs into account.

“Else they risk falling into underachievement or experiencing burnout as they get older,” she said. 

IDENTIFYING THOSE WITH 'THE GIFT'  

To assess if a child is suitable for the current GEP, Singapore requires Pri 3 students to participate in two rounds of examinations involving tests in English language, mathematics and general ability.

Such tests are common globally, though their scope and timing might differ. Some countries also use psychometric tests to identify children with unfulfilled potential. 

In Australia, for example, students take four tests in reading comprehension, communicating ideas in writing, quantitative reasoning and abstract reasoning. Year 7, 9, 10 and 11 students, who are typically aged between 12 and 16, can take these tests to enter the country’s Gifted and Talent programmes.

Several education experts and psychologists said that figuring out if a child is truly gifted can be difficult in some cases especially because gifted children are more likely to have neurodevelopmental conditions compared to their peers.

This phenomenon arises because profoundly high levels of intelligence stem from atypical neurological patterns and development.

Broad signs of neurodivergence include repetitive behaviours or tics, restricted interests, sensory sensitivities and attention difficulties.

Some gifted children might also display socio-emotional issues like have difficulty making friends or socialising with same-age peers, pointed out Dr Chow. 

Dr Nicole Chen, a clinical neuropsychologist from The Other Clinic, added that gifted children may have asynchronous development, which is when a child's intellectual abilities exceed their emotional or social maturity.

"These challenges can include feelings of isolation, as they may struggle to connect with peers who do not share their interests or intellectual level. They may also experience intense perfectionism, anxiety, or pressure to meet high expectations from themselves and others, leading to frequent burnout," she said.

Dr Chee Ai Lian, master specialist in gifted education at MOE’s Gifted Education Branch said: “Like all children, it’s important for these children to receive love, encouragement, affirmation and support. They also need the intellectual stimulation."

“With the refreshed model of GEP benefiting more students, these students will continue receiving the support they need.”

Dr Chee also noted that some children might be “late-bloomers” when it comes to displaying their potential. With the current GEP having a single national standardised test at Pri 3, these students might be left out.

“These learners differ in their readiness for advanced learning in different areas. So, even though a child could be precocious, they may not yet be ready to commit to more advanced learning,” she said.

But as these children mature and grow, they might eventually show signs that they enjoy the intellectual challenge.

“That’s why the refreshed GEP hopes to be able to pick up students at different junctures when they are ready, ensuring they are not left behind,” she said. 

GENIUS IN THE MAKING? 

As with any examination, children can be prepped to answer correctly and ace tests.

In Singapore, parents’ desire to secure a spot for their children in the GEP has sparked a booming secondary market of tuition centres for GEP prep. 

These centres, which can charge hundreds of dollars per class, promise to train students for such tests from as young as Pri 1. Among other services, they provide mock examinations and run through previous GEP tests to give their students a leg up, with one centre charging about S$180 for each test.

This is despite MOE discouraging parents from prepping their children for the GEP test. 

Assessment books for students to practise questions from the Gifted Education Programme and Maths Olympiad contest, sold at a bookstore.

While some parents may hope to mould their child into a genius, education experts said that gifted children are shaped by nurture, but require an innate level of intellect.

Dr Ho said: “My own personal belief is that a child can’t be taught to be gifted… there is some part that is innate.”

Back when he was a teacher and part of MOE’s Gifted Education Branch, which oversees the GEP, Dr Ho recalled that some parents trained their children to ace the tests and get into the programme.

However, these students who were nurtured would “fade out” by the time they were in Pri 5, struggling to keep up with the class.

SINGAPORE'S HISTORY OF GIFTED EDUCATION

In 1981, Dr Tay Eng Soon, then Minister of State for Education, led a team to study gifted education programmes in Germany, Israel and Russia. The team found that the Israeli model, which features classrooms specific for academically-inclined students, was the most suitable for Singapore.

MOE set up the Gifted Education Branch in May 1983 to select teachers and students for the GEP, conduct teacher training sessions and prepare a curriculum.

The first selection test involved about 40,000 Primary 3 pupils, of which 100 students were selected for the programme pilot at Raffles Girls’ Primary and Rosyth School.

The top 5 per cent of pupils taking the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) were also tested, of which 100 students are selected for the pilot GEP in secondary schools, conducted at Raffles Institution and Raffles Girls’ Secondary.

When the programme first kicked off, the selected students only made up 0.25 per cent of their cohorts.

A 10th-anniversary book by MOE on the programme reported that the GEP in the early years faced challenges, such as meeting the needs of gifted children who have "a wide range of abilities and interests", and figuring out how diverse gifted children in Singapore are.

The curriculum of the GEP in its early years was also different. Primary school GEP students had to sit for social studies papers in their PSLE, for example.

In 1987, a decision was made not to extend the GEP to junior colleges as these schools could already sufficiently meet the educational needs of students with differing academical abilities and interests, and such students could also take part in programmes such as doing research with the National University of Singapore.

But by the 20th year mark of the GEP, the education system had shifted "from an efficiency-driven education to ability-driven education model", then acting Minister for Education Tharman Shanmugaratnam wrote in a book commemorating the programme's anniversary. 

To this end, the GEP was further expanded, and by 2003, 1,393 primary students and 1,954 secondary students were in the programme's nine primary and seven secondary schools.

Students in the GEP were also exposed to more enrichment programmes, such as a Moot Parliament Project that was piloted in 2003.

The 20th anniversary book also took stock of GEP students who went on to take on scholarships. Between 1991 and 2003, 22 GEP students became President's Scholars. There were also three Lee Kuan Yew Scholars and three Rhodes Scholars during the same period.

In 2004, MOE introduced the Integrated Programme (IP) for secondary school students, allowing selected students to skip the GCE O-Level examination as part of a through-train six-year programme. These students graduate with a GCE A-Level certificate, International Baccalaureate Diploma or NUS High School Diploma, depending on which school they enrol in.

With this move, enrolment into the GEP in secondary schools declined. As such, the ministry discontinued the GEP in secondary schools in 2008, but students could attend school-based GEP in schools offering IP. 

That same year, GEP students also started spending half of their curriculum time with non-GEP students to mitigate growing criticism that the programme breeds elitism.

The GEP will now undergo another major shift: Starting with this year's Pri 1 cohort, the revamped GEP will cut across all 180 primary schools, and students will be able to join the programme for the particular subjects that they are strong in.

With the revamp, MOE estimates that about 10 per cent of students will be able to benefit across 180 schools. Currently, just 1 per cent — around 370 to 400 students — of each cohort participates in the GEP, while school-based higher-ability programmes benefit 7 per cent of the cohort.

Instead of two rounds of selection tests involving English language, mathematics and general ability papers at Pri 3, students will take only English language and mathematics papers in the new GEP

Teachers’ day-to-day observations and students’ work will also be taken into account in assessing their suitability. Students can join the programme from Pri 4 to 6, instead of just at Pri 4.

HOW BEST TO SUPPORT S'PORE'S GIFTED? 

While the upcoming revamp will benefit more youngsters, some education experts have reservations about relying on teachers’ observations to identify potential students for the revamped GEP.

Dr Ho said that gifted children might showcase disruptive behaviour in school as they lack the intellectual stimulation they need, making them seem inattentive rather than gifted.

While conducting induction programmes for teachers as part of MOE’s Gifted Education Branch between 1993 and 1998, he recalled that teachers were also often unable to identify gifted children in case studies presented to them. 

Thus, Dr Ho questioned if a teacher’s day-to-day observations would be accurate as a tool in determining a child’s suitability for the programme.

"Gifted children are very different from one another. So there needs to be a holistic approach through multiple observations in varying contexts, not just in the classroom," he said.

He added that teachers could keep a keen eye on their students in other settings as well, such as during recess or even at home.

However, Dr Chee said students will still go through a national standardised test, which will be used with "other sources of information such as teacher observations and student work" to determine a student's suitability for the revamped GEP.

She added that the Gifted Education Branch has been training teachers to spot talent by observing a child’s traits, which cannot be assessed by tests alone. Such traits include persistence, curiosity, reasoning and the ability to seek, find and solve problems.

“Part of the training also involves understanding the cognitive and affective traits of higher-ability learners. For example, teachers learn that a child’s multiple questions does not mean that they are argumentative or disrespectful. Rather, it is a sign of their inquisitiveness, curiosity and strong opinions,” said Dr Chee.

Dr Chee also said the workshops expose teachers to higher-ability learners' socio-emotional needs, such as those with asynchronous development.

Assoc Prof Tan is also concerned that students who are considered gifted and might have additional intellectual, psychological and emotional needs might be sidelined when the GEP is expanded to more students. This refers to students who might be neurodivergent, or have asynchronous development.

“In this regard, MOE has been actively promoting this idea of differentiated instruction, that a teacher should be able to try and customise their teaching and learning approaches,” he said.

“So, the hope is that even as the boundaries are being blurred, teachers of these high-ability programmes will be able to differentiate their instructional and assessment strategies to reach out to the genuine needs of these intellectually gifted students.”

As for several GEP alumni, the hope is that the revamp will address their concern about the pressures children face when they are labelled as gifted.

“You’re told you’ve received all these resources and that you're exceptional. So when hit with failure, or just not performing as highly as you’re expected to, it can be devastating,” said Mr Gerald Choa, 28, a cultural insights consultant at Quantum Consumer Solutions.

“While it was great to have that opportunity to explore different things and receive that intellectual stimulation, the flipside was the pressure-cooker environment as everyone was highly competitive.”

As a university student, Mr Choa remembered breaking down when his grades were not the best.

Even though his school days are behind him, Mr Choa admitted that he still struggles with the fear of failure and the need to always excel.

Mr Azizul Kamal Shah, 36, an in-house legal counsel, said it is most important that future GEP students are taught how to use their giftedness without the pressure to overachieve.

“As someone who was labelled gifted, I felt that when failures happened it was only me to blame because others could do it, so why couldn’t I? …Sometimes there are other factors like luck and being in the right place at the right time,” he said.

As he spends more time in the workplace, Mr Azizul said that he has learnt to accept the fact that mistakes do happen and not to be too hard on himself.

On this note, Mr Sng said that the revamped system should allow more children access to gifted education, regardless of their family background and ability to afford enrichment classes. However, he added it is important that parents and teachers ensure children do not feel their self-worth is defined by their academic performance, or by being part of the GEP. 

“It’s harmful to pressure children to get in or to game a system so that a child can feel special by being better than others,” he said.

“The programme should be to build a generation of forward and progressive thinkers... Not to determine a child’s worth based on whether they are gifted.”

Read the original article here .

Source: TODAYOnline © Mediacorp Pte Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Reluctant Writers: Understanding Common Issues for Gifted Children

You know the scene – the blank homework assignment, the pencil thrown in anger, the tears – these are all the hallmarks of a reluctant writer. Writing battles like these might even be nightly in some instances. It may come as a surprise, but the elementary school years make for some of the most harrowing writing experiences gifted students face. While some educators might label these students as lazy or obstinate, there are several common reasons within the profoundly gifted population (PG) that might contribute to writing challenges, especially for students around ages 6 to 11.

Asynchrony.  This is a likely explanation for the discrepancies you see in your little one’s intellectual ability and their physical output, like a written assignment. When it comes to writing, younger PG students become frustrated that their fine motor skills aren’t able to keep up with the torrent of ideas in their head. They might also be thinking in abstractions at a young age and lack the vocabulary to capture their concepts. If this is the source of stress for your reluctant writer, try to help them capture their thoughts with digital recorders or speech to text technology and then work through turning the ideas into written answers.

Rigid Thinking.  It is common for many profoundly gifted and twice-exceptional students to approach the world in black and white – much of life’s structure can be reduced to a formula or scientific principal for these students. This may turn a student into a reluctant writer when the writing exercise is too open-ended, and writing seems to be an abstract process without rules. To aid these students, teach them about the processes and concrete steps of writing, such as brainstorming, outlining, drafting, revising, and editing, coupled with examples of writing at each stage.

Perfectionism.  Gifted students frequently set high standards for themselves and are likely to experience perfectionism to some degree. For writing, this can become paralyzing when they spend hours trying to perfect their handwriting or rewriting the same sentence until it feels flawless. Perfectionism is often tied to feelings of acceptance, so it is important to help create an environment where these students feel valued for effort and parents model instances where being less-than-perfect is acceptable.

Personal Interest.  Asking a student to write a two-page paper on how paint dries might be as boring as, well, watching paint dry. Writing assignments can come with unreasonable expectations. Just because you know a student physically can write a two-page paper, asking them to may feel unreasonable if the topic holds no personal interest for the student. For a curious brain, try seeing if they can write their paper in the form or a folk tale or a scientific natural law or in some other frame they find stimulating. Personal interest can provide some motivation to get the work done.

Looking into Twice-Exceptionality.  If you suspect your child might be struggling with something else, such as dysgraphia, it might be a good idea to observe, ask questions, research, and keep an objective log of your child’s struggles for a few weeks to see if there are any patterns. It might be time to reach out to a professional if the duration, intensity, or frequency of the writing challenges increases.

Getting to the root of reluctant writing helps students get the support they need rather than internalize the message that they are “bad” at writing. You might be looking at a combination of some of the above or perhaps there is something else that is contributing to your child’s writing difficulties. Once the source of the challenge has been identified, parents, educators, and student can work together to create writing interventions that are informed by the individual child, their unique needs, and what works well for them. For more on helping differently wired students succeed with writing, check out some of these resources below:

“ Follow the Fear: Anticipating Missteps in Learning to Write ” by P. Sciortino from the 2e Newsletter

“ Teaching Writing in the Elementary Years ” by Suki Wessling

“ Trouble Expressing Ideas in Writing: What You Need to Know ” from Understood.org

“ Patterns in Writing 1: Introduction ” from Byrdseed

“ How to use the Writing Process (in plain English!) ” – by Seth Perler

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Follow our news, recent searches, the big read: 'excuse me, are you gifted' a deeper look at gifted education and its relevance to society, advertisement.

A student raising his hand to answer a question posed by the teacher in a Gifted Education Programme (GEP) class at St Hilda's Primary School on Aug 28, 2024. (Photo: TODAY/Nuria Ling)

This audio is generated by an AI tool.

Loraine Lee

SINGAPORE: At work, Ms Neha Dharma is like any of her other colleagues. The 24-year-old Singaporean human resource consultant based in Sydney, Australia does not have all the answers, sometimes makes mistakes and even gets chided by her boss. 

This was perhaps not what her 10-year-old self would have imagined when she was part of a small group of pupils specially selected from Singapore schools to attend the Gifted Education Programme (GEP). 

“We were told (by our teachers) that we’re all gifted ... that we should be doing better. I started putting pressure on myself because I slowly started believing this idea that I should be gifted,” said Ms Dharma, noting how the “gifted” label came with unrealistic expectations set not only by teachers and parents but also herself. 

Nevertheless, she enjoyed the stimulating classes and group projects under the GEP at St Hilda's Primary School - though she didn't do as well as she expected in her Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), getting 253 out of a possible 300 points under the old scoring system. 

Recalling how she was "devastated" at her results, Ms Dharma said: “At that moment, I felt like I had messed up my entire life ... I came to the conclusion that I was not gifted like I was told, and I wasted everyone's time and resources.” 

She went on to study at Raffles Girls' School and later graduated from Australia's University of New South Wales in 2022 with a bachelor's degree in commerce.

Now, at the workplace, her "giftedness" is not something she would bring up "because it's weird talking about something that happened so long ago, and I don't think I'm special or gifted".

Similarly, Mr Edric Sng does not consider himself particularly extraordinary but he credits his time in the GEP as having spurred his love for learning.

The 44-year-old pastor of Bethesda (Bedok-Tampines) Church was part of the GEP from 1989 to 1991 at Anglo-Chinese School (Primary), and from 1992 to 1995 at Anglo-Chinese School (Independent). The GEP for secondary school students was discontinued in 2008.

“I remember when learning literature in secondary school, we would act out plays and were allowed to explore the subject beyond just the fixed text,” said Mr Sng, who used to be a news editor. 

“I definitely enjoy learning because of how we were allowed to explore, wrestle with the text and curriculum and satisfy our curiosity.”

Ms Dharma and Mr Sng's experiences are not unique: Many GEPers - as students who have gone through the programme call themselves - have contributed to society in their own ways, even if some of them are quick to downplay their achievements or "giftedness".  

In response to TODAY's queries, the Ministry of Education (MOE) said GEP alumni have made significant contributions to both private and public service, in diverse fields including academia, arts, law, medicine, research, entrepreneurship and technology. It added that some have gained international recognition for their areas of specialisation and many are also active leaders in the community and social sectors.

But what exactly is "giftedness"? How is it measured? Can it be trained or nurtured? What is its relevance to today's educational systems and the workplace? 

The GEP - with all its pros and cons - is once again being dissected after Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced at his inaugural National Day Rally this year that the programme would be discontinued in its current form to benefit more students and meet the development needs of such students. 

Among the changes: Students will be able to join higher-ability programmes from Primary 4 to 6 instead of just one time at Pri 4. The selection process will also incorporate teachers' day-to-day observations and students' work for a “more holistic and comprehensive” understanding of their abilities.

The moves represent a shift in how MOE defines and characterises gifted children. But as some experts pointed out, academic performance still remains central in defining a child’s potential to be stretched further through the GEP.

Revamped GEP to start with 2024 Primary 1 cohort, 10% of students to be selected for high-ability programmes

FAQ: What you need to know about Singapore’s revamped Gifted Education Programme

What makes a child "gifted".

During a recent science class at St Hilda's Primary, a group of students excitedly raised their hands to answer Mrs Ushanthini Arumugam’s question about how the digestive system works.

A 10-year-old GEP pupil called on to answer replied that it “all ends up as NEWater”, referring to the output of Singapore's wastewater treatment system. 

Mrs Ushanthini, who has been a science GEP teacher for 11 years, told TODAY such a response from students in her GEP class are common as they tend to be quicker in comprehending class materials, show more curiosity than other children and often are aware of global issues.

“They are not limited to print-based text. They try to form relationships with conceived ideas with their own knowledge … and are able to build conceptual connections,” she said.

To engage her GEP students, Mrs Ushanthini says she adopts a knowledge-building teaching approach, which allows her to figure out what her students already know, before addressing any other concepts that they bring up. She also answers anything they are curious about, using it as an opportunity to guide them through the class learning objectives. 

"This knowledge-building culture promotes student agency as students discuss what they want to learn," she explained.

In comparison, students from the three non-GEP higher-ability classes she teaches usually benefit from more “scaffolding” questions and probing to help them arrive at learning objectives. While they are also curious, many are guarded about sharing their knowledge especially when it veers from the topic, she said.

In general, higher-ability learners tend to demonstrate a high level of curiosity and creativity and can learn faster than their peers, MOE told TODAY. 

"They find, solve and act on problems more readily and can grasp abstract ideas and make connections between different concepts," it said, adding that these traits are supported by international literature. 

If solely based on the Intelligence Quotient (IQ), gifted children are often considered to have an IQ of 130 or higher. The average IQ is 100.

However, education experts noted that giftedness is defined differently around the world and there are other characteristics beyond IQ to be considered.

Associate Professor Jason Tan from the National Institute of Education (NIE), who does research in comparative education and education reform, said that while Singapore has tended to adopt a more academic approach in its definition, some countries take into account different talents such as excellence in the arts and sports.

Even the way gifted students are classified can be different. In Taiwan, its Education Ministry views giftedness as a form of special needs, he said.

“In other words, these children are quite different from the bulk of other children, and need some kind of special services and special activities to suit their giftedness,” said Assoc Prof Tan.

In a 2008 publication, Taiwan’s Education Ministry stated that gifted students are “often a special group of unsatisfied clients who, instead of ‘knowing too little’, know too much and learn too fast”.

Assoc Prof Tan added that growing research on gifted children has also found that giftedness is not universal across various domains.

A child might be, for example, gifted in languages but average in mathematics.

Despite the absence of a universal definition, identifying “gifted children” using their own metrics remains important for educational authorities since countries need to invest in their human capital.

Dr Ho Boon Tiong, principal consultant educationist at training and consulting firm ClassPoint Consulting, said: “From an education standpoint, it is worth the investment to ensure no wasted talent. Also, in terms of access and equity, we need to ensure that those with special needs and learning needs on both ends of the spectrum are supported.”

Two child psychologists told TODAY that it is a common misconception that gifted children need less support.

Dr Annabelle Chow, a principal clinical psychologist of Annabelle Psychology and Annabelle Kids pointed out that gifted children need to be appropriately engaged in academic and social settings as well as be encouraged and supported, taking their unique needs into account.

“Else they risk falling into underachievement or experiencing burnout as they get older,” she said. 

NDR 2024: How the Gifted Education Programme has evolved through the years

Snap insight: conceived for a minority of students, gifted education programme has been overtaken by wider trends, identifying those with "the gift".

To assess if a child is suitable for the current GEP, Singapore requires Primary 3 students to participate in two rounds of examinations involving tests in English language, mathematics and general ability.

Such tests are common globally, though their scope and timing might differ. Some countries also use psychometric tests to identify children with unfulfilled potential. 

In Australia, for example, students take four tests in reading comprehension, communicating ideas in writing, quantitative reasoning and abstract reasoning. Year 7, 9, 10 and 11 students, who are typically aged between 12 and 16, can take these tests to enter the country’s Gifted and Talent programmes.

Several education experts and psychologists said that figuring out if a child is truly gifted can be difficult in some cases especially because gifted children are more likely to have neurodevelopmental conditions compared to their peers.

This phenomenon arises because profoundly high levels of intelligence stem from atypical neurological patterns and development.

Broad signs of neurodivergence include repetitive behaviours or tics, restricted interests, sensory sensitivities and attention difficulties.

Some gifted children might also display socio-emotional issues like having difficulty making friends or socialising with same-age peers, pointed out Dr Chow. 

Dr Nicole Chen, a clinical neuropsychologist from The Other Clinic, added that gifted children may have asynchronous development, which is when a child's intellectual abilities exceed their emotional or social maturity.

"These challenges can include feelings of isolation, as they may struggle to connect with peers who do not share their interests or intellectual level. They may also experience intense perfectionism, anxiety, or pressure to meet high expectations from themselves and others, leading to frequent burnout," she said.

Dr Chee Ai Lian, master specialist in gifted education at MOE’s Gifted Education Branch said: “Like all children, it’s important for these children to receive love, encouragement, affirmation and support. They also need the intellectual stimulation."

“With the refreshed model of GEP benefiting more students, these students will continue receiving the support they need.”

Dr Chee also noted that some children might be “late-bloomers” when it comes to displaying their potential. With the current GEP having a single national standardised test at Primary 3, these students might be left out.

“These learners differ in their readiness for advanced learning in different areas. So, even though a child could be precocious, they may not yet be ready to commit to more advanced learning,” she said.

But as these children mature and grow, they might eventually show signs that they enjoy the intellectual challenge.

“That’s why the refreshed GEP hopes to be able to pick up students at different junctures when they are ready, ensuring they are not left behind,” she said. 

GEP 'not only about academics': Current, former students highlight small class sizes, special resources

Commentary: As a parent, I'm relieved that the Gifted Education Programme is getting revamped

Genius in the making .

As with any examination, children can be prepped to answer correctly and ace tests.

In Singapore, parents’ desire to secure a spot for their children in the GEP has sparked a booming secondary market of tuition centres for GEP prep. 

These centres, which can charge hundreds of dollars per class, promise to train students for such tests from as young as Primary 1. Among other services, they provide mock examinations and run through previous GEP tests to give their students a leg up, with one centre charging about S$180 for each test.

This is despite MOE discouraging parents from prepping their children for the GEP test. 

While some parents may hope to mould their child into a genius, education experts said that gifted children are shaped by nurture, but require an innate level of intellect.

Dr Ho said: “My own personal belief is that a child can’t be taught to be gifted … there is some part that is innate.”

Back when he was a teacher and part of MOE’s Gifted Education Branch, which oversees the GEP, Dr Ho recalled that some parents trained their children to ace the tests and get into the programme.

However, these students who were nurtured would “fade out” by the time they were in Primary 5, struggling to keep up with the class.

SINGAPORE'S HISTORY OF GIFTED EDUCATION

In 1981, Dr Tay Eng Soon, then Minister of State for Education, led a team to study gifted education programmes in Germany, Israel and Russia. The team found that the Israeli model, which features classrooms specific for academically inclined students, was the most suitable for Singapore.

MOE set up the Gifted Education Branch in May 1983 to select teachers and students for the GEP, conduct teacher training sessions and prepare a curriculum.

The first selection test involved about 40,000 Primary 3 pupils, of which 100 students were selected for the programme pilot at Raffles Girls’ Primary and Rosyth School.

The top 5 per cent of pupils taking the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) were also tested, of which 100 students are selected for the pilot GEP in secondary schools, conducted at Raffles Institution and Raffles Girls’ Secondary.

When the programme first kicked off, the selected students only made up 0.25 per cent of their cohorts.

A 10th-anniversary book by MOE on the programme reported that the GEP in the early years faced challenges, such as meeting the needs of gifted children who have "a wide range of abilities and interests", and figuring out how diverse gifted children in Singapore are.

The curriculum of the GEP in its early years was also different. Primary school GEP students had to sit for social studies papers in their PSLE, for example.

In 1987, a decision was made not to extend the GEP to junior colleges as these schools could already sufficiently meet the educational needs of students with differing academic abilities and interests, and such students could also take part in programmes such as doing research with the National University of Singapore.

But by the 20th year mark of the GEP, the education system had shifted "from an efficiency-driven education to ability-driven education model", then-acting Minister for Education Tharman Shanmugaratnam wrote in a book commemorating the programme's anniversary. 

To this end, the GEP was further expanded, and by 2003, 1,393 primary students and 1,954 secondary students were in the programme's nine primary and seven secondary schools.

Students in the GEP were also exposed to more enrichment programmes, such as a Moot Parliament Project that was piloted in 2003.

The 20th-anniversary book also took stock of GEP students who went on to take on scholarships. Between 1991 and 2003, 22 GEP students became President's Scholars. There were also three Lee Kuan Yew Scholars and three Rhodes Scholars during the same period.

In 2004, MOE introduced the Integrated Programme (IP) for secondary school students, allowing selected students to skip the GCE O-Level examination as part of a through-train six-year programme. These students graduate with a GCE A-Level certificate, International Baccalaureate Diploma or NUS High School Diploma, depending on which school they enrol in.

With this move, enrolment into the GEP in secondary schools declined. As such, the ministry discontinued the GEP in secondary schools in 2008, but students could attend school-based GEP in schools offering IP. 

That same year, GEP students also started spending half of their curriculum time with non-GEP students to mitigate growing criticism that the programme breeds elitism.

The GEP will now undergo another major shift: Starting with this year's Primary 1 cohort, the revamped GEP will cut across all 180 primary schools, and students will be able to join the programme for the particular subjects that they are strong in.

With the revamp, MOE estimates that about 10 per cent of students will be able to benefit across 180 schools. Currently, just 1 per cent - around 370 to 400 students - of each cohort participates in the GEP, while school-based higher-ability programmes benefit 7 per cent of the cohort.

Instead of two rounds of selection tests involving English language, mathematics and general ability papers at Pri 3, students will take only English language and mathematics papers in the new GEP

Teachers’ day-to-day observations and students’ work will also be taken into account in assessing their suitability. Students can join the programme from Primary 4 to 6, instead of just at Primary 4.

HOW BEST TO SUPPORT SINGAPORE'S GIFTED? 

While the upcoming revamp will benefit more youngsters, some education experts have reservations about relying on teachers’ observations to identify potential students for the revamped GEP.

Dr Ho said that gifted children might showcase disruptive behaviour in school as they lack the intellectual stimulation they need, making them seem inattentive rather than gifted.

While conducting induction programmes for teachers as part of MOE’s Gifted Education Branch between 1993 and 1998, he recalled that teachers were also often unable to identify gifted children in case studies presented to them. 

Thus, Dr Ho questioned if a teacher’s day-to-day observations would be accurate as a tool in determining a child’s suitability for the programme.

"Gifted children are very different from one another. So there needs to be a holistic approach through multiple observations in varying contexts, not just in the classroom," he said.

He added that teachers could keep a keen eye on their students in other settings as well, such as during recess or even at home.

However, Dr Chee said students will still go through a national standardised test, which will be used with "other sources of information such as teacher observations and student work" to determine a student's suitability for the revamped GEP.

She added that the Gifted Education Branch has been training teachers to spot talent by observing a child’s traits, which cannot be assessed by tests alone. Such traits include persistence, curiosity, reasoning and the ability to seek, find and solve problems.

“Part of the training also involves understanding the cognitive and affective traits of higher-ability learners. For example, teachers learn that a child’s multiple questions do not mean that they are argumentative or disrespectful. Rather, it is a sign of their inquisitiveness, curiosity and strong opinions,” said Dr Chee.

Dr Chee also said the workshops expose teachers to higher-ability learners' socio-emotional needs, such as those with asynchronous development.

Assoc Prof Tan is also concerned that students who are considered gifted and might have additional intellectual, psychological and emotional needs might be sidelined when the GEP is expanded to more students. This refers to students who might be neurodivergent, or have asynchronous development.

“In this regard, MOE has been actively promoting this idea of differentiated instruction, that a teacher should be able to try and customise their teaching and learning approaches,” he said.

“So, the hope is that even as the boundaries are being blurred, teachers of these high-ability programmes will be able to differentiate their instructional and assessment strategies to reach out to the genuine needs of these intellectually gifted students.”

Revamped Gifted Education Programme could lighten teachers’ workload, says Chan Chun Sing

As for several GEP alumni, the hope is that the revamp will address their concern about the pressures children face when they are labelled as gifted.

“You’re told you’ve received all these resources and that you're exceptional. So when hit with failure, or just not performing as highly as you’re expected to, it can be devastating,” said Mr Gerald Choa, 28, a cultural insights consultant at Quantum Consumer Solutions.

“While it was great to have that opportunity to explore different things and receive that intellectual stimulation, the flipside was the pressure-cooker environment as everyone was highly competitive.”

As a university student, Mr Choa remembered breaking down when his grades were not the best.

Even though his school days are behind him, Mr Choa admitted that he still struggles with the fear of failure and the need to always excel.

Mr Azizul Kamal Shah, 36, an in-house legal counsel, said it is most important that future GEP students are taught how to use their giftedness without the pressure to overachieve.

“As someone who was labelled gifted, I felt that when failures happened it was only me to blame because others could do it, so why couldn’t I? … Sometimes there are other factors like luck and being in the right place at the right time,” he said.

As he spends more time in the workplace, Mr Azizul said that he has learnt to accept the fact that mistakes do happen and not to be too hard on himself.

On this note, Mr Sng said that the revamped system should allow more children access to gifted education, regardless of their family background and ability to afford enrichment classes. However, he added it is important that parents and teachers ensure children do not feel their self-worth is defined by their academic performance, or by being part of the GEP. 

“It’s harmful to pressure children to get in or to game a system so that a child can feel special by being better than others,” he said.

“The programme should be to build a generation of forward and progressive thinkers ... Not to determine a child’s worth based on whether they are gifted.”

This article was originally published in TODAY.  

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Video: High school janitor overwhelmed with gratitude after students present him with dream car

The high school students wanted to show their appreciation for their favorite janitor and the community rallied around them.

By Chase Martin

Students at James Madison High School in Vienna, Virginia, raised more than $20,000 and then surprised their school janitor with his dream car — a cherry-red Jeep Wrangler — this week.

Francis Apraku was overwhelmed with emotion when the students presented him with the gift on Sept. 9, according to videos shared on social media.

Apraku, who came to the U.S. a few years ago, leaving behind family and friends, was moved by the gesture from students who described him as always kind and friendly.

The students started a GoFundMe page after learning Apraku had long wished to own a Jeep Wrangler but thought he would never be able to afford one.

@wtopnews A group of sophomore students at James Madison High School in Vienna, Virginia, stunned their beloved school custodian Monday afternoon, by presenting him with something he’s dreamed about — a Jeep Wrangler. Learn more about how Francis Apraku is "more than a custodian, he’s a friend" on WTOP.com or our app. Link in bio. (🎥: WTOP/Dick Uliano) ♬ original sound - WTOP News - WTOP News

Bennett, one of the students involved in the project, told “Good Morning America” that Apraku is “more than a janitor” and that he and his friends wanted to show appreciation for all he does by going above and beyond his duties as custodian.

“As a challenge, we decided to start a fundraiser to see if we could make his dream come true because he does so much for us and gets nothing in return,” Bennett explained in an email.

The students’ fundraiser gained momentum quickly, raising $5,000 in just two days. Bennett said he was shocked by the community’s generosity.

“It was really amazing how the town could come together and raise that much so quickly for a man they never knew,” he said.

The Vienna Inn, a local restaurant, hosted the presentation of the Jeep to Apraku and posted a video of the moment on Instagram .

“Many of you have been following the heartwarming story of JMHS students who set out to raise funds to buy their custodian his dream car, a Jeep Wrangler,” the restaurant said in the post. “Today, they made his dream a reality and presented him with the Jeep!”

Speaking with the local news station Fox 5 DC , who was present at the celebration, Apraku expressed his gratitude.

“I will give thanks to Almighty God for making today for me,” Apraku said. “Today is a great day for me and I didn’t believe this would happen in my life.”

Intellectually Gifted Children Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Many of us can concur that in a class there are those students who are exceptional performers. Some of us also belong to this bracket of intellectually gifted. What makes these differences between intellectually gifted learners and peers of the same standing in such a way that it’s like we do not belong to the peers who we are of the same age?

What are some of the difficulties experienced by such students owing to the fact that they are just smart without putting a lot of effort in their class work? This paper therefore is an insight as to the difficulties experienced by intellectually gifted learners.

In the classroom setting, different students have different abilities. However, schools tend to group students on the basis of their chronological age on the assumption that the students being of the same age have many interests in common (Gross, 2004). Schools therefore do not consider that there exist differences within the groups of equal standing (David, 2004).

Most of the times, a teacher will tend to teach the whole class as a group but when assessment is done, some students excel more than others. It intrigues keen observers that there are students who do not seem to pay attention to classroom work yet they do well in the exams. Other students demonstrate abilities that are beyond their age. Then, do we have learners who can be termed as geniuses?

My point of argument comes in, in that the teacher may use learner centered method of learning, actively engaging all students in the classroom and giving them equal opportunities to participate in the classroom, but there are those students who always emerge the best in class.

These are the students who are regarded as intellectually gifted students. These are the students who are born gifted to the extent that they cannot fit in with their other peers (David, 2004).

Intellectually gifted students have higher levels of cognitive development in that they are able to think in a more logical way, solve problems that would pose a challenge to the students who are of the same age with them and are also able to make decisions on complex matters. To say that they are average students who have studied and acquired knowledge would be ignorance of the highest degree.

Many scholars agree that students vary in their abilities for they are those with astonishing intellectual giftedness and others with modest intellectual giftedness.

Other students are fairly gifted and others are said to poses highly intellectual giftedness while another minority group of intellectually gifted students exceeds the giftedness of all intellectual gifted learners and are said to be overwhelmingly intellectually gifted (Gross, 2004). The overwhelmingly intellectual gifted learners are rare in a normal population.

All in all, one cannot fail to identify the academically gifted students in the classroom. In such a scenario, students grouped together on the basis of their chronological age exhibit many affective and cognitive differences which work to the disadvantage of the intellectually gifted student.

Although there is no universally accepted definition of intellectually gifted students, many people will agree that these students have a high intellectual quotient (I. Q.), excel in their work be it talent, academics just but to mention a few and also have cognitive and affective abilities so high to the extent of being noticeable or standing out from their peers who are of the same age (Gross, 2004).

These students go beyond being average even in their characteristics for they tend to be perfectionists and have so many expectations on themselves not to mention the expectations of their teachers’ peers, parents and society once it comes to their realization that a certain student is intellectually gifted.

Cognitive and affective differences determine the way the learner learns in the classroom and in turn their overall performance in the classroom.

Reis & Renzulli (2004) propose that intellectually gifted students have advanced cognitive abilities and their ability to develop a better understanding of the abstract concepts such as death. With these understanding in abstract concepts such as death, lack of substance of life and irrelevance of living, the gifted student develops common problems with students who are of the same peer (Reis & Renzulli 2004).

While the cognitive realm is the most widely used in identifying the intellectually gifted students, the affective domain also plays a major role. The intellectually gifted learners adjust well to the society (Jano, 1983) and are therefore said to be socially smart.

The intellectually gifted learner has the characteristic of dominating his/her peers of the same age who have profound confidence in him/her.

However, the intellectual sharpness of the gifted learner always lead the learner to experiencing social problems like being isolated from his/her peers and being too selective when choosing the people to associate with, with most studies done on the intellectual gifted students pointing that they prefer to be in the company of children older than them (Colangelo & Davis, 2003).

Researchers believe that by choosing the company of older peers that is where the intellectual gifted child feels that he/she can associate with peers of the same caliber in terms of their cognitive and affective development.

Intellectual giftedness is a unique gift in itself and a child who possesses such capabilities should be nurtured to allow him or her develop the gift in the areas he/she is gifted in.

However, the first challenge to this rare gift is that the school curriculum itself does not make any special programs that can accommodate these gifted children. More often than not (Colangelo & Davis, 2003), teachers themselves may not be willing to accept that there are students whose capabilities exceed that of their peers and therefore see no need to treat these gifted learners differently.

Teaching intellectually gifted students requires a school to have special program that differentiates the curriculum used by the gifted students from the one that is used by students who are of average performance. The task is even made harder when a student is gifted in only one subject.

For schools to effectively cater for the needs of the intellectually gifted; programs that allow gifted students to advance in their subjects and grades and be enrolled in two programs at the same time are needed and not many schools are willing to go to such heights (James, 1994).

For instance, in a case where a school may have an overly intellectual gifted learner, chances of meeting another learner who is overly intellectually gifted are rare if not close to zero.

Intellectually gifted students always feel isolated when they are with their peers because they do not fit in with their peers. They behave in a mature way and are able to solve problems and face challenges more than their peers. With these in mind, the gifted student seeks the company of other older students for him or her to fit in.

This characteristic makes people believe that the gifted student is antisocial with his/her peer and therefore branded a lonely person. Their affective abilities make them a bit critical of their friends and the feelings of their friends towards them. The intellectually gifted child will choose friends keenly than a child of average abilities and this makes them to have fewer friends (Ellen, 1996).

Intellectually gifted students are more intelligent than their other peers who are of the same status for their ability to process information is higher than that of their peers. Therefore, in a classroom setting, the gifted students will always feel dragged behind by others.

For instance, when a teacher is explaining a concept to students of average ability, the intellectually gifted student may feel bored because he or she has already grasped the concept and may find the teacher repeating her/himself. On the other hand, the intellectually gifted may also feel frustrated that the teacher is not going with the pace that he or she would want the teacher to go with (Colangelo & Davis, 2003).

For the teacher to effectively solve the problem in a classroom containing both gifted and average learners he or she needs to integrate learning styles that can also accommodate the intellectually gifted learners.

The teacher may also impact negatively on the gifted student in that he or she may assume that since the gifted student has already gotten the concepts that are being taught in the classroom, that they would be no need to focus attention on him/her. Here, the student’s intellectual giftedness works to his or her disadvantage (Vialle & Geake, 2002).

This further intrigues more questions in the intellectual gifted student’s mind of how weird he/she is not to deserve the attention of the teacher which leads to the student feeling neglected and not cared for by the teacher. This is very crucial especially to the development of a child.

A child needs to be loved and cared for and tendencies to focus more attention on other children leaving others out leads to children engaging in deviant behaviors just to seek the attention of the teacher. Not that the intellectual gifted students are mischievous, (Colangelo & Davis, 2003) they may engage in deviant behaviors so that they can also catch the attention of the teacher.

For the teacher who is a keen believer of disciplined students, the intellectually gifted may suffer the most at the hands of the teacher because the teacher will always be punishing the intellectually gifted child in the belief that he or she is instilling discipline in the intellectually gifted child (James, 1994).

When the gifted students are combined with students of average ability in the classroom, the intellectually gifted ones always feel that they have learnt everything there is to learn in the classroom for they are no more challenges for them.

This leads to underachievement of the student in the class in addition to being bored. Learning is made fun when a student discovers something new that he or she did not know and therefore is intrigued to find out more about that particular concept (Vialle & Geake, 2002).

On the same tone, the gifted child may not see the need to be in the classroom or pay attention when the teacher is explaining concepts for they are already familiar with them. This brings us to the point where these intellectually gifted students are seen as arrogant but this is not the case for they are simply bored.

The teacher can even punish the gifted student without knowing that he or she did not intend to be arrogant or not to pay attention. When these intellectually gifted students are not realized, they take a backseat in their academic achievements to the extent that they can even fail to complete classroom assignments. Some intellectually gifted students may become rebellious to their teachers and peers.

The students also face discrimination and stigmatization from their other peers in that their exemplary performance is regarded as weird (Benbow & Stanley, 1997). In most cases, other students will find their character abnormal and they would not understand why their character deviates from their own. The intellectually gifted are not taken as normal and students always view them as weird.

Some students of the same peer will even go to the extent of believing that the gifted students have some supernatural influence whereas we know that the gifted only possess innate intellectual capabilities which is not a basis to be discriminated against.

When a learner with intellectual gift, it also contributes to the learner asking him/her self many questions about his/her intellectual gifts. Some learners may even go to the extent of blaming themselves and develop shy characters.

Gifted students when discriminated by their peers will try to fit in, in all ways. One of the ways in which gifted students can try to fit in is through hiding their giftedness for they do not want to be regarded as weird and feel out of place.

When this happens, the gifted student regardless of his or her intellectual abilities will not let out his or her true self which becomes a hindrance to finding out who he or she really is. They do not discover their true identity and they hide in their cocoon by pretending to be like other students of average ability.

Other than being resented by his/her peers, the intellectually gifted also faces teacher’s resentment. As illustrated earlier on that the intellectually gifted student will most of the time ask silly questions and challenge the teacher in topics which are not in his/her caliber and show no interest in class work, a teacher who cannot identify the intellectual gifted child will probably resent such a child’s character (Ellen, 1996).

To counter the resentment from both teacher and peers, intellectually gifted children always tend to hide their abilities so as to be at par with the norm as that of the peers. When these children hide their giftedness just to appear normal to their peers and teachers, researchers proclaim that the drive in exploring educational fields disappears in addition to loosing the meaning of achieving (Painter, 1976).

The intellectual gifted learner will therefore attend school for the sake of attending school not for the desire to learn. Their exceptional abilities are therefore shunned from surfacing and being beneficial to the society and to the student. They do this trying to seek approval from their peers and teachers and they therefore have a hard time in seeking social approval if doing so means pretending to be who they are not.

The gifted learner struggles to be understood by the teacher and the learners and in a worse scenario where the teacher has no background information about the existence of intellectually gifted students.

The gifted students lack pride in themselves for they are seen to do things that are not normal. Their self esteem is greatly affected by their intellectual sharpness (Vialle & Geake, 2002). The problem becomes worse especially during adolescent when the student is trying to identify his or herself.

Many are the times that a gifted child on reaching adolescent develops identity crisis the reason being that the student cannot fully find out who he or she is.

Coupled with doubts about his or her true identity from his peers who they are of the same age, the intellectually gifted student develops self doubt of him/herself leading him/her to have a low self esteem. The teacher on the other hand should try as much as possible to help the gifted student in revealing his/her true identity (Benbow & Stanley, 1997).

Having intellectually gifted children in a classroom is a challenge itself to the teacher, the basis of my point being that these intellectually gifted children will often challenge the tutor while he or she is teaching (Painter, 1976). When this happens, the teacher may feel intimidated by the gifted child.

This causes misunderstanding between the child and the teacher for the gifted child interests in challenging the teacher may be solely contributing to the classroom discussion while the teacher may regard the student as a know it all type. For effective learning to take place, the teacher and the student have to be in good terms.

On the other end, students of the same peer may feel that an intellectually gifted student is disturbing their lesson by interrupting the teacher during content delivery. The teacher experiences two extreme ends where they are those who are eager to learn and others who are intellectually gifted and know it all thereby creating confusion in the classroom.

When a teacher discovers that a particular student is intellectually gifted, he or she may employ strict marking procedures when marking the intellectually gifted learner’s paper (Janos, 1983). Where a teacher has given marks to an average student, the intellectually gifted may fail on the same as a result of the high expectations that the teacher may have on the gifted learner (Reis & Renzulli, 2004).

Teachers also may ask hard questions to the intellectually gifted so as to prove to the other students that the intellectually gifted does not know everything that there is to know. In such cases, the resentment of the intellectually gifted learner to the teacher keeps on increasing and the more he or she becomes disinterested in school.

A teacher may also not feel compelled to answer a question asked by the intellectually gifted child and may ignore the question on the assumption (Janos, 1983) that the student both knows the answer and just wants to test the teacher or can research for him/herself and get the correct answer to the question. This further creates frustrations to the intellectually gifted child in his/her endeavors of learning.

While it is normal for the intellectually gifted student to want to discuss concepts to the very minor details, the teacher may only be interested in giving students the contents that will help them answer questions in the exam (Vialle & Geake, 2002).

The advanced cognitive abilities of the intellectually gifted again works to his/her disadvantage in that the teacher may not have the time to discuss concepts in the classroom in a detailed manner and this makes the learner who is gifted academically feel that he/she has been wasted or that the content discussed by the teacher is shallow.

Intellectually gifted children may find it hard to repeat exercises given by the teacher in the classroom. One of the distinctive characteristic of the intellectually gifted is that, the student will master the content after repeating it only twice in most cases.

When the teacher therefore make the intellectually gifted child to repeat a task for more than two times, the child loses focus and creates a negative attitude towards schools. Eventually, the IGC (Intellectually Gifted Child) may end up hating school altogether (Reis & Renzulli, 2004).

The gifted student has no contact with his/her peers. He/she does not enjoy the company of his/her peers and will most of the time prefer to be in the company of other older students who he/she can identify with. Therefore, the methods used by schools where these intellectual gifted students are grouped with students of average ability create a restrictive milieu for them (Ellen, 1996).

The school only assumes that the intellectually gifted students have the same abilities as that of their peers and shuns off the doors of exploration for the intellectually gifted learner. In addition, the content taught in the classroom where this intellectually gifted child is in on the basis of chronological age is also restrictive enough and does not offer room for exploration of the gifted mind of the learner.

The intellectually gifted learner may lack competition in the classroom (Ellen, 1996). Other than the teacher who the intellectually gifted would seem to engage in discussion in complex issues, his/her peers do not conform to his level.

The intellectually gifted child does not have the challenge and therefore being in the classroom with people who he/she cannot identify with and going through a curriculum that poses no challenge to him/her seems unbearable.

The schools assumptions that by mixing the intellectually gifted with the average ability learners, more positive outcomes of learning would be realized because of interactive learning is somehow questioning when it comes to dealing with intellectually gifted learners.

The extant literature shows that the intellectually gifted learners need a more challenging environment and an environment that does not put restrictive measures on the achievement of the learners.

To drive my point closer home, the intellectually gifted learner in the first place sees no similarities between him/herself with peers of same age. Then, how would we expect the learner to have the zeal in learning if there is none of the peers who can challenge him/her?

In conclusion, we must acknowledge that the intellectually gifted learner has abilities that need to be encouraged and that this can only be achieved if schools are willing to come of their cocoon of comfort of grading the students on the assumption that since the students are of the same age, then they must have many similar things in common. Schools ought to develop programs that accommodate the needs of the intellectually gifted learners.

Benbow, P. & Stanley, S. (1997). Inequity in Equity: How “equity” can lead for High Potential Students. Psychology: Public Policy and Law . 2 (2), 249 – 292.

Colangelo, N. & Davis, G. (2003). Handbook of Gifted Education . Boston. Allyn and Bacon. 3 rd Ed.

David, B. (2004). Children’s Thinking: Cognitive Development and Individual Differences . Stamford. CT. Wadsworth Publishing.

Ellen, W. (1996). Gifted Children . New York. Basic Books.

Gross, M. U. M. (2004). Exceptionally Gifted Children. London. Routledgefalmer.

James, W. (1994). “Nurturing Social Emotional Development of Gifted Children” Eric Clearinghouse on Disabilities and Gifted Education . Reston, VA. Web.

Janos, M. (1983). The Intellectual Ability Psychological Vulnerabilities of Children of very Superior . Unpublished Doctorial Dissertation. NY. New York University.

Painter, F. (1976). Gifted Children: A Research Study . Knebworth. England. Pullen Publications.

Reis, M. & Renzulli, S. (2004). Current Research on the Social and Emotional Development of Gifted and Talented Students: Good News and Future Possibilities. Psychology in the Schools, 41, published online in Wiley InterScience.

Vialle, W. & Geake, J. (2002). The Gifted Enigma . Cheltenham, Australia. Hawker Brownlow.

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