Using LAMS to Enrich Teaching and Learning for Gifted and Talented Students

1. Using LAMS to Enrich Teaching and Learning for Gifted and Talented Students Dr Mark Butler Gosford High School

2. Introduction 2003 Macquarie University – First introduction to LAMS 2004 Premier’s Scholarship to travel to UK to examine the LAMS trials. 2005 DET CLI LAMS ‘mini trial’ > Presentation to senior DET staff >Presentation to Selective School Principals >LAMS Report to Premier Published >Published LAMS Paper in NSW Science Teachers Association Journal 2006 Multi-discipline LAMS Learning Teams formed at Gosford HS >Presentation to Selective School Head Science Teachers

3. Results of CLI Trial • All six schools found that LAMS had the potential to be a very useful teaching resource. • All three Dimensions of the Quality Teaching Model (Intellectual Quality, Quality Learning Environment and Significance) could be addressed by LAMS. • Some concern by the Department that higher order thinking skills had not been accessed by the LAMS sequences.

4. Higher Order Cognitive Thinking Skills? Bloom’s original taxonomy and Anderson’s updated version

5. Bloom’s and LAMS • Creating? • Evaluating? • Analysing? • Can LAMS lessons engage students individually and collaboratively in activities that involve and enhance higher order thinking skills?

6. Photoelectric Effect Analysing

8. Atomic Models Evaluating

11. Designing an experiment Creating

13. Gifted and Talented Students • Identification? • An intellectually gifted student as one who has, special abilities in seeing relationships, reasoning and thinking. • A talented student as one who has the ability to apply themselves with such dedication that they perform at an outstanding level in one or more areas. • Can LAMS be used to identify and enhance the education of gifted and talented students?

14. How we Learn • David Krathwohl: Taxonomy of thinking in the affective domain. • Benjamin Bloom, Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl: Cognitive thinking taxonomy • Howard Gardner: Multiple intelligences • Joseph Renzulli: The Enrichment Triad Model I) Exploratory activities, II) Skills development, III) Investigation of real problems

15. Common GATS Strategies • Acceleration • Facilitating activities with peers of similar abilities • Enrichment activities beyond the classroom • Mentors • Independent, project-based and contract learning • Differentiating the curriculum

16. Differentiated Curriculum and Instruction for GAT Students • Differentiated instruction occurs when a teacher proactively plans varied approaches to what students need to learn, how they will learn it, and/or how they can express what they have learned in order to increase the likelihood that each student will learn as much as he or she can as efficiently as possible. Tomlinson, C. A. (2003). Differentiating instruction for academic diversity. In J. M. Cooper (Ed.), Classroom teaching skills, 7th ed (pp 149-180). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

17. Key Elements of the Differentiated Curriculum* • Content • Process • Product • Learning Environment * Detail from WA DET Gifted and Talented Education Policy

18. Content* • Uses information to illustrate abstract ideas and based on concepts rather than on the acquisition of knowledge • Arranged to challenge students to formulate concepts, develop relationships and make applications • Organisationally economic to facilitate transfer of learning, memory and understanding of concepts and generalisations • An expansion of regular curriculum to include the study of gifted and creative individuals and the investigative techniques used by scholars in different disciplines • More abstract, complex and based on ideas that have a wide range of applicability both within and across disciplines • Greater variety than the classroom curriculum

19. Process* • Pre-testing • Stresses the use of information rather than the acquisition of it • Provides opportunities for problem solving and creativity • Uses discovery and inductive learning techniques • Leads students to higher levels of thinking • Ensures learning is structured, but open-ended • Ensures students have the opportunity to give evidence to support their reasoning, not just the correct answer • Provides greater freedom of choice in what and how students learn.

20. Product* • Resemble the products being studied and developed by the experts in the field (report, talk, poster, film, play, etc) • Allows solutions to real problems • Allows for presentation of these problems and solutions to a real audience • Evaluated by an appropriate audience and by the student • Extend solutions to generalisations • Demonstrate a transformation of information which is based on the collection and analysis of original data rather than a summary of others' research

21. Learning Environment* • variety • flexibility • more and varied resources • sophisticated equipment • warmth and trust • non-threatening situations for testing views, risk taking • provision of situations to promote creative and divergent thinking

22. Possible Problems • Overuse • Access • Limiting learning styles • Time in setting up suitable sequences • Students Taking the easy option • Content/information versus knowledge/ understanding

23. So what might a GATS LAMS sequence look like? • Some student choice in what and how they will learn (multiple sequences?) • Pre-testing to avoid repetition. • A range of optional extension activities. • Students challenged to form and apply concepts from rich (multidiscipline) content • LAMS dovetailed with a range of other pedagogies. • Students formulate problems, questions and sequences. • Open ended questions and activities used. • High expectation about quality of reports (product) • Should facilitate learning beyond the classroom