Differentiating for Gifted, High Achieving, and High Potential Learners: Quality, Not Quantity

1. Differentiating for Gifted, High Achieving, and High Potential Learners: Quality, Not Quantity Katherine R. Fielder, Ed.S. Piedmont College July 31, 2010

2. Who is Gifted? Area for most gifted behaviors Joseph Renzulli’s Three Ring Model of Giftedness

3. Who is Gifted?

4. Gifted Students

5. No Child Left Behind? • “…because of instructional requirements imposed by No Child Left Behind legislation, many of today’s teachers are asked to focus more on students who perform below proficiency than on those who excel. By requiring all students to be [mathematically] proficient by 2014, the law is, in effect, negatively impacting the education of those students who are already considered academically proficient.” Rita H. Barger, 2009

6. No Child Left Behind? • “With the advent of No Child Left Behind (2001), increased pressure has been placed on educators to identify and remediate students who do not demonstrate mastery of curriculum standards, however, little attention has been given to advanced learners.” Manning, Stanford, and Reeves, 2010

7. No Child Left Behind? • “The ‘love-hate’ relationship society has had with gifted education has led to both an energetic focus on gifted students and a near total ignoring of their needs.” Colangelo & Davis, 2003

8. No Child Left Behind? • 10%-20% of high school dropouts score in the gifted range on standardized tests. • 40% of the top 5% of high school graduates will not graduate from college. • Over 50% of the gifted identified population do not demonstrate academic achievement commensurate with their tested ability. • Gifted elementary students have already mastered 35%-50% of the current grade-level standards before entering the classroom.

9. What is the answer? DIFFERENTIATION

10. What is differentiation? Differentiation is NOT Differentiation IS • giving students more of the same types of problems • giving students busy work to complete when they finish assignments early • using advanced learners as peer tutors • a teacher’s response to learner’s needs • meaningful, respectful tasks for all learners • variety, choices, and options • flexible grouping • ongoing assessment

11. What is differentiation? • “Differentiation is not a recipe for teaching. It is not an instructional strategy. It is not what the teacher does when he or she has time. It is a way of thinking about teaching and learning. It is a philosophy.” Carol Tomlinson, 2000

12. Carol Tomlinson’s Differentiation Model

13. KUDs K KNOW U UNDERSTAND D DO

14. The Students Will KNOW: • Knowledge/Remembering: Retrieving, recognizing, and recalling • Terms, definitions, locations

15. The Students Will UNDERSTAND: • Comprehension/Understanding, Applying: Constructing meaning, interpreting, summarizing, inferring, comparing, explaining • Venn diagrams, journal entries, essay questions

16. The Students Will DO: • Analyzing, Evaluating, Creating: Breaking material into parts & determining how parts relate, making judgments, reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure

17. RAFTs Jamie Miller, 2009

18. Tic-Tac-Toe/Think-Tac-Toe Compare and contrast Lewis & Clark and the Native Americans of the time. Trace the Lewis & Clark Expedition on a map. Discuss ways Lewis & Clark impacted our country.

19. Learning Menu

20. Questions?

21. References • Barger, R.H. (2009). Gifted, talented, and high achieving. Teaching Children Mathematics, October 2009. • Chapman, C. & King, R. (2008). Differentiated instructional management: Work smarter, not harder. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. • Manning, S., Stanford, B., Reeves, S. (2010). Valuing the advanced learner: Differentiating up. The Clearing House, 83(4). • http://differentiationcentral.com/ • http://renzullilearning.com • http://www.odu.edu/educ/roverbau/Bloom/blooms_taxonomy.htm