Gifted Students ...

I was interested in spending some time reading about working with gifted students because in my experience, it seems to be an area that slips through the cracks more than ever. Chval and Davis raised the point that with an increased emphasis on passing standardized tests and making AYP teachers feel more pressure to raise up their lower students while not putting as much effort into challenging their gifted students. While I feel my CT works hard to create differentiated assignments, I still see quite a few behavioral problems coming from one student in my class that is probably the most gifted in math and quite a few other subjects that is stemming from boredom. In the same article, I felt very bad for Craig because I know I have seen many of those scenes repeated in many different classrooms.

The Wilkin's piece talks extensively about the Mathematics Investigation Center. I thought a lot of the guidelines they put down for using this piece would make it very useful in the classroom. The MIC is a set of about nine activities modeled around different areas of math that are kept in the classroom for students that need more challenging work to do. Some of the problems are easier so most of the class can work on them but some are designed to be less accessible to lower students in the class. I liked the idea that students were not asked to work at the MIC outside of math time so they did not feel like they were being forced to do extra work. The activities in the MIC are supposed to be designed to be integrated into the math unit the class is working on at the time so gifted students aren't just working on drop-in lessons. This seemed like a great solution to some of the problems that students complained about in the Chval and Davis piece where they did not like that they finished far before other students in the class and had nothing to do, or that the teacher did not want them working ahead of other students in the class. This instruction method is a great way to keep everyone on the same topic, but different students can work on the problems at different levels.

Chval and Davis bring up a similar idea when they discuss differentiated tasks. These tasks usually have several different "levels" that students can work on according to ability. Students that considered high level can work on more advanced parts of the problem but all students should be able to access the problem at some level. This is another good way to challenge gifted students without making them feel like they have been singled out to do more work.

I found some relevance within the "Behavioral" piece as well. Some teachers might make the assumption that since a student misbehaves and does not do his work that means he is not smart. When Carter was given the chance to do "real world problems," something that the gifted students interviewed in Chval requested, he responded well and really began to show interest in math class. While home issues that were out of his control disrupted his math learning, it shows how much effect trying to really get students to problem solve with different problems can have on students in the classroom. The cranium crackers got Carter more interested in staying engaged in class and gifted students need the same effort from teachers to keep them engaged when they already know the content their classmates are working on.