Including G&T pupils in the primary classroom

The ‘open-door’ approach to G&T provision involves offering high quality learning opportunities to all children, rather than offering a special diet exclusively to those identified as G&T (the ‘closed-door approach’). In this way, children flourish and may well excel, merely as a result of being exposed to a classroom atmosphere based on the premise of enriching provision for all. The door is open to all children at all times, but not every child will go through it: some children may go through it once or twice, others (ie the G&T) will go through it many times, especially when it comes to their area of expertise. This approach has three main elements: 

1. The personalised learning environment
Children need to feel that they are working within, and helping to create, a ‘thinking classroom’. A noticeboard dedicated to ‘thinking’ is now part of many classrooms, displaying learning styles, key words, and brain cartoons; a ‘word of the day’, a daily dose of French/Spanish; news items and interesting websites. A table of topical books, pictures and artefacts,  regularly re-stocked and always accessible to the children, is another useful feature.

Classical music is increasingly used as a way of settling children as they enter the classroom, and is a good accompaniment to a thinking skills task at the start of the day. The ‘starter’ can be presented in different ways according to the age of the children: on the board or on cards, or with very little ones, discussed verbally. Books provided for the starters may not be marked or even looked at by the teacher, so pupils don’t have to worry about neat handwriting and correct spelling – it’s their ideas that are important, and these can be shared at the end of the session. The Starters are designed to inspire thinking by being challenging, appealing and accessible to all – and to be fun, eg:

• mathematical puzzles
• illustrating a verb using its initial letter
• the A-Z of various things
• differences and similarities
• advantages and disadvantages (eg of being a child or an adult)
• things with wheels/that are red/that absorb moisture.

It can be very powerful to link starter themes to curriculum areas and the outcomes of children’s thinking can then be used as starting points or discussion points in subsequent lessons. 

2. The personalised curriculum
Aim to create a classroom atmosphere based upon discussion, enquiry, critical thinking and questioning. Share learning objectives with the children, written as a question (TLP – today’s learning point), with the whole class agreeing on success criteria so that each child has ownership and is motivated to succeed. (G&T learners may be ‘stretched’ by applying the TLP of the lesson in a different context.) At the end of the lesson, children reflect on what they have done and how easy/difficult it was, adding a TIL (‘today I learned’) at the end of their work.

Equipping children with strategies to structure their thinking can be particularly useful for the gifted and talented. It may take a few sessions to explain them, but these devices become valuable tools for pupils to use in directing their own learning:

• Mind mapping helps children to organise their thinking about a topic, a person, a place, or a concept in a visual way, which invariably leads them to make connections that they wouldn’t have otherwise made.  The hierarchical nature of the branches of mind maps also allows for ranking connections: use them for note taking, story planning, character sketches and revision. 

• Concept lines represent a continuum, with opposite attributes at either end.  They take away the worry of being right or wrong, allowing personal opinions and feelings to be expressed. If children are able to justify why they have placed their character, thought, feeling or opinion in a particular place on the line, it represents their individual perception and as such, cannot be judged to be ‘wrong’. This is particularly valuable for G&T pupils because it provides a means of articulating their views, which are often deeper and more carefully considered than those of other children. Explaining their ideas to the rest of the class allows G&T children to reason through their thinking and benefits all the children in showing them a different angle.

• Edward de Bono’s PMI involves children in considering (for a specified time) what is positive (P) about something or someone, the minus attributes (M) and everything they regard as interesting (I), which is neither good nor bad. PMIs provide an excellent springboard for discussion, allowing the children to share their ideas and the teacher to compile a whole class list of contributions, which invariably contain views from many angles. 

3. The personalised extra-curriculum
The introduction of philosophy into primary classrooms can generate an immense range of thought and original ways of looking at the world around us. Children can be placed in hypothetical positions that require moral judgements to be made, problems to be solved and consequences to be considered. When this works well, discussion will spill over into playtimes and after school – even resurfacing at home so that parents find themselves drawn into the dilemma. Philosophy can be a unique motivator, promoter of values and self-esteem and is also enormously helpful as a means of developing and promoting pupils’ speaking and listening skills.

A thinking skills approach to homework also provides valuable opportunities for children including G&T children, to achieve. Set a task on Monday and collect it in on Friday. This allows pupils to spend as much time on a topic as they want to and really ‘go to town’ on something that interests them (lots of G&T children complain that there are few opportunities for this type of extended task in the school day).
Possibilities include:

• surveys, using family and friends (what would you like to see more of on TV?)
• research ‘from scratch’ – using the library and internet (penicillin)
• writing a biography of someone they know (grandad, neighbour, aunt)
• planning a lesson (to start a new topic?)
• planning an advertising campaign (for their school, a local café, new type of biscuit).

Marcelo Staricoff is deputy headteacher at St Bartholomew’s CE Primary School in Brighton