Gifted and talented - classroom strategies

Storytelling to stretch young minds

scameron — Thu, 19 May 2011 15:48:09 +0100

Storytellers in ancient, preliterate cultures could remember word-for-word epic tales that might take several evenings to recount. They would store the entire tribal history in their minds and retell it at celebrations and ceremonies.

Writing stories down in books and reading them again liberates the mind from these feats of memory. But traditional storytelling still has a role to play and is a skill worth cultivating.

Academic language for G&T learners

scameron — Thu, 20 May 2010 09:28:43 +0100

In the secondary phase of education in particular, classroom coverage of language is understandably driven by the requirements of subject. But without a focus on language development, learners will fail to secure the command of language that they require for high achievement. EAL-focused initiatives like A Language in Common could have made the difference, but largely have not.

The Ofsted Report on G&T practice

scameron — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:57:22 +0000

During July 2009 Ofsted visited 17 secondary schools and nine primary schools to evaluate their capacity to provide for gifted and talented pupils, to identify good and less effective practice and to determine how best schools might be supported. They published their report, Gifted and Talented Pupils in Schools, in December 2009 (ref 090132); we report on their findings in the next two issues of this e-bulletin, analyse the critical assumptions and issues in the report and look at how schools can usefully respond.

Practical strategies and ideas for G&T provision in your school

scameron — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:48:16 +0000

Welcome to your new e-bulletin from Optimus Education, Gifted and Talented Update. Each fortnight we will bring ideas, news and information direct to your inbox. With leading teachers getting to grips with the role, and every teacher aiming to provide personalised learning for every child, there should be something of interest for everyone!

Know, Want to know, Learned: G&T classroom strategies

scameron — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:09:57 +0100

Activity: KWL (Know, Want to know, Learned)
Subject: Any
Key Stage(s): 2, 3 and 4.

Time to allocate:
This activity can be used alongside a learning stimulus in a lesson such as a section of video material, independent research using books or the internet, or a reading from a text. If, for example, a video clip of 10-minutes’ length is used, the KWL activity should be used before, during and after the clip, as detailed below.

A-Z of G&T education (8): Gifted and talented

scameron — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:42:01 +0000

What exactly do we mean by ‘gifted and talented’? Dictionaries give us the following definitions:

gifted:

having natural talent or aptitude
highly intelligent (children)

talented:

Dragon's Den for G&T students

scameron — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:43:36 +0000

Anyone familiar with the television programme Dragons’ Den will be aware that marketing an idea is not for the faint-hearted, particularly when the judges have a financial interest in the outcome. However, maintaining a calm demeanour under intense scrutiny is one of the more challenging, but useful life skills: so any chance to practise it within a safe environment has to represent a good opportunity for young people.

Working with governors on G&T provision

scameron — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:52:13 +0000

School governors come in all shapes and sizes, with a wide range of knowledge and expertise. Their backing for G&T provision can be a great asset, helping you to move G&T up the agenda, secure resources and improve the opportunities on offer for your most able pupils. Keeping governors informed about your work as G&T coordinator/ leading teacher can be influential in getting and keeping them ‘onside’, and the pointers below may help you in addressing this part of your role.

G&T classroom strategies: Science

scameron — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:38:13 +0000

Maps from memory: the underlying theory

Maps from memory is based on research conducted into working memory – the part of our memory that stores and immediately processes information. Unlike long-term memory, which is a vast library of information, working memory is small and information can be retained and processed in it for only short periods of time.

A-Z of G&T education (7): Extension

scameron — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:31:45 +0000

Extension is a term used to include a variety of methods of providing stimulation, challenge and pace for able pupils. It involves teachers in planning appropriate differentiation for quick learners rather then requiring them to do ‘more of the same’.

Leaders of the future: G&T leadership skills

scameron — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:35:31 +0000

As a G & T coordinator or leading teacher, how would you describe your leadership style? If you have been part of a programme of continuous professional development such as the NCSL ‘Leading from the Middle’ programme, you will undoubtedly have been asked to consider your own leadership style and how it affects the contributions of others around you; but have you considered how this learning could benefit the experiences of those able, gifted and talented students you support?

Identifying primary G&T pupils in sport

scameron — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:55:47 +0000

A cricketer’s career

When he was 13, cricketer Nasser Hussain was well on the way to becoming an international leg spinner. But within three years, he had undergone a growth spurt and in the midst of this physical development his bowling fell to pieces.

Developing visual learning skills

scameron — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:26:12 +0000

Visual imagery can play a powerful role in accelerating human learning. Complex verbal explanations can often be simplified through visual support – now made more accessible through new technologies. And organised learners use a range of low-tech techniques to make sure that their notes are well-ordered and easy to navigate. These include colour coding, post-it notes, highlighters, etc, to help categorise, prioritise and make the work user-friendly.

A gifted and talented sports programme

scameron — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:05:48 +0000

A progressive and forward thinking establishment, Bucklers Mead School is situated on the outskirts of the town of Yeovil in Somerset. Head of PE at the school is Craig Fletcher, a dynamic and experienced teacher who over the past few years has been involved in the National Gifted and Talented Scheme.

In a department of over five teachers and a schools sports coordinator (SSCO) – assigned to develop partnership with a local sports colleges and primary feeder schools – Craig has worked hard to improve the quality and performance of both students and staff.

A-Z of G&T education (6): Enrichment

scameron — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:03:03 +0000

Enrichment is now sometimes used as an umbrella term to encompass a range of approaches to enhancing opportunities for G&T learners, especially in terms of out-of-school activity. It can be useful, however, to consider enrichment as a certain form of differentiation with particular characteristics which include:

Personalised learning opportunities for able students

scameron — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 14:00:51 +0000

Ask your closest colleague why they are doing what they are doing and chances are they will attribute the shape of their lives to an early encounter that unlocked something – ‘let the genie out of the bottle’ – forever. The encounter may have been with a book or a place, but it was more than likely with a teacher. It would have been the teacher who introduced the book, the place, or the subject, topic, activity, pastime that introduced the ‘other world’, beyond the routine and the everyday.

Improving your school's G&T provision

scameron — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:14:36 +0000

This downloadable resource includes a structured framework to guide you in developing provision for able pupils, including four key principles, to be used by new G&T coordinators or classroom teachers looking for a fresh perspective on their work.

Making G&T cool using sport

scameron — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:10:54 +0000

Why do some G&T pupils get bullied for being bright whereas others do not? There is a theory that it is cool to be a bright boy if you are good at sport (for girls, the acceptance is possibly linked more to fashion sense and an attractive appearance). One of the biggest responsibilities of a school leader is to develop a culture where it is cool to be bright.

Keeping G&T education relevant to 21st century skills

scameron — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:22:41 +0000

We are all aware that the pace of change in society generally is accelerating and the future will be very different from the present. The catalysts for change are many, but include: continuing technological change; the impact of globalisation; changes to ways of working; the impact of demographic trends; changing lifestyles; and economic prosperity.

A-Z of G&T education (5): Compacting

scameron — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:43:41 +0000

Compacting is a way of making curricular adjustments for students to avoid them ‘learning’ what they already know and can do. Essentially, the procedure involves:

1. defining the learning objectives of a particular unit of work

2. determining and documenting which students have already mastered most, or all, of a specified set of learning outcomes

A-Z of G&T education (4): Cognitive ability tests

scameron — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:40:28 +0000

The cognitive abilities test (CAT) is a group-administered assessment of a range of reasoning skills. The tests look at reasoning with three different types of symbols: words, numbers and shapes/figures, ie verbal, quantitative and non-verbal reasoning.

Lesson planning aids effective G&T provision

scameron — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:22:44 +0000

Experts spend more time planning and preparing than novices. This is true in a variety of human endeavours such as athletics, art, novel writing, science, mathematics or cookery. The same is true in the classroom – truly outstanding teachers and learners have become highly proficient because they have planned, monitored, reflected on and evaluated their own practice.

Monitoring G&T progress

scameron — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:27:31 +0000

While most schools now justifiably claim to be able to identify their able, gifted and talented pupils with relative confidence, many admit that they still have some way to go to match this efficiency with a reliable and consistent means of monitoring progress and determining whether these pupils are fulfilling their potential.

Enquiry skills activity: What is learning?

sara — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:28:27 +0100

Activity on 'What is learning?'

Written by Anne de A'Echevarria

This teaching resource is taken from the winner of the BESA Educational Resources Book Award 2007 - Thinking Through School.

Integrating gifted and talented provision

sara — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:28:25 +0100

Integrating gifted and talented provision for whole school success

From creating the right staffing structure, to the leading teacher's role to the 'inside-out' and 'outside-in' approach, this resource explains how gifted and talented provision can be a vehicle for improvement in secondary schools.

A-Z of G&T education (3): Breadth

scameron — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:21:01 +0100

Breadth can be interpreted in different ways in the context of G&T education. There is the breadth concerned with the opportunities provided within lessons, breadth within the whole curriculum offer, and breadth of experience outside of school/college.

Breadth within lessons
Consideration of breadth in lesson planning allows learners to experience additional material outside of the core offer and can lead to a more complete understanding of the topic being studied. Breadth enables pupils to:

Valuing high achievement

scameron — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:21:01 +0100

I set out to visit Disraeli Community Primary School in High Wycombe to see if their ‘whole school ethos’ translated into anything concrete and tangible. This meant seeking out not just pretty displays or neat policies in a file, but the ways in which, to quote the institutional quality standards ‘an ethos of ambition and achievement is agreed and shared by the whole school community,’ with ‘success across a wide range of abilities celebrated.’

How to discover and nurture artistic talent

scameron — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:21:00 +0100

Gifted and talented students may have individual or unusual artistic skills and interests which can be difficult to nurture within the school curriculum. The lucky ones will be attending lessons or workshops outside school, but there will be others whose needs are not fulfilled. These students could benefit greatly from taking part in the Arts Award scheme.

Personalisation for gifted and talented students

scameron — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:21:00 +0100

One might argue that if education is personalised to meet the needs of individuals, then gifted and talented education is redundant: but, on the other hand, personalisation might prove the perfect mechanism for embedding gifted education within overall provision. This can only work, however, if we truly understand the concept of personalisation and how best to exploit it.

A-Z of G&T education (1): Acceleration

scameron — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:57 +0100

Acceleration (or ‘fast tracking’) is a way of speeding up the pace of learning for pupils, providing an ‘express route’ through their education. It can involve:

Preparing for exceptional performance

scameron — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:56 +0100

Over the last 100 years or so, various approaches have been developed which aim to provide a good education for the gifted and talented. In the early days, the most popular approaches were built around the idea that G&T people display unique, inherited characteristics and so can be readily identified. But as the field has developed, it’s become increasingly obvious that psychological opinions on this matter have varied widely and over time they have fragmented rather than converged.

How to reinvigorate your G&T provision

scameron — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:55 +0100

The Gifted and Talented Strategy has been in existence since the 2000/01 pilot of the G&T strand within the Excellence in Cities programme. Nevertheless, it continues to be one of the politically most contentious topics in secondary comprehensive education in this country – recent research from the DCSF indicated that one in 10 secondary schools and 65% of primary schools have still not identified their most able students.

Using the Institutional Quality Standards to improve G&T provision

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:51 +0100

Provision for gifted and talented pupils is a major part of personalising learning. National Strategies (Training materials for Leading teachers for gifted and talented education, DfES, 2007)

One of the most important things for a school to remember is that gifted and talented provision is not something separate, it is part of the school being a good school. Deborah Eyre (Training materials for Leading teachers for gifted and talented education, DfES, 2007)

Energising literacy through collaboration

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:48 +0100

Hastings and St Leonards is in a coastal location, with issues which affect many such communities, including a high level of social deprivation. In 2000, when the EAZ was set up, it was the 27th most deprived local authority area (out of 354) on the multiple deprivation index. This has improved somewhat and in 2004, when the cluster started, it was the 39th most deprived. It still contained the highest proportion of super output areas (SOAs, small geographical areas of about 1,500 residents) in the most deprived 20% in the South East region.

Background

Using ICT with able classes

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:48 +0100

I’m no expert when it comes to technology! I would like to think though, that I have kept up with the times. I value my classroom projector and interactive whiteboard, make full use of my laptop and as a teacher overseeing the practical production part of the AQA Media Studies GCSE course, I now know my way around moving image editing software and can teach pupils how to make best use of a digital camera.

Learning and thinking skills through drama

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:47 +0100

Mantle of the Expert was devised by Dorothy Heathcote, one of the world’s leading drama teachers, and is currently being introduced in schools throughout the country, with support from the QCA. The approach involves pupils in developing a particular point of view, as people running a fictional ‘enterprise.’ For example, they might be running a library, factory or shop; they might be scientists in a laboratory. They undertake a range of different tasks in running their enterprise, building up a collective sense of expertise.

Identifying and providing for younger gifted and talented children

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:47 +0100

Of all the children with special needs, younger gifted and talented children are the group most frequently ignored throughout the world. What happens if we continue to neglect the needs of these children?

There are losses for the children themselves and for society at large. In societies that care about their children, it is difficult to justify continued neglect of those for whom the ordinary pre-school or school programme may be a poor fit.

Religious education: raising the bar for gifted and talented

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:45 +0100

Recently a fellow RE adviser told me that when marking a GCSE religious education exam paper she came across one attempt to answer a question which stuck in her memory. The exam question was, ‘Why do people argue about abortion?’ All sorts of things can happen given the stress and tension of exam conditions, but the answer given by one particular candidate was something like the following…

Differentiation - some practical suggestions

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:35 +0100

What makes a well-differentiated lesson that hasn’t taken you longer to prepare than it takes to deliver? Below are some practical suggestions to help you engage and challenge your able, gifted and talented pupils in a mixed-ability class.

By task
1. Use an able pupil to quickly recap on the previous lesson’s learning for the other pupils.

Injecting pace into lessons

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:27 +0100

A headteacher once described a lesson of mine he observed as having ‘unrelenting pace’. I’m not sure whether this was a compliment about a fast-moving, productive lesson in which my pupils were asked to work hard with unbroken concentration, or a criticism of the lesson providing too few opportunities for my pupils to reflect and ponder on the skills I was teaching them.

Provision and support for gifted and talented children in primary schools

ewtemp — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:21 +0100

Effective Provision for Gifted and Talented Children in Primary Education (DfES-04072-2006) was published in November 2006, together with Identifying Gifted and Talented Pupils. The guidance is set out under the same five headings used for the National Quality Standards in Gifted and Talented Education. Section 4 is likely to be of particular interest to SENCOs and should inform discussions about roles and responsibilities, and all the more so at a time when the DfES and TDA are seeking to define the SENCO role more carefully.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:18 +0100

One student is in her room doing her homework. Another is downstairs watching TV. Which one is really enjoying herself? According to Hungarian American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced chick-sent-me-high-ee), it’s more likely to be the former. If course material is well organised and logically presented, will students learn it? Only if they are motivated, says Csikszentmihalyi.

Robert Sternberg's educational theories

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:18 +0100

Born in 1949, American psychologist Robert Sternberg says that he was considered a ‘dummy’ in his first years at school. At university he dropped out of psychology because of his poor grades and switched to maths. This is hardly the background one would expect of the man who is now IBM professor of psychology and education at Yale., but Sternberg’s research has been driven by his personal problems.

Personalised learning and G&T

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:14 +0100

‘Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.’ Emile Chartier

Practical personalised learning

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:14 +0100

Schools can rightly claim that they are often buried in new initiatives, parachuted from on high by a government which sometimes seems out of touch with just how busy schools already are. Yet those of us who feel passionate about the need to get the best for our more able youngsters have welcomed the recent emphasis on gifted and talented students.

Gifted and talented in Northern Ireland

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:12 +0100

Being a ‘spector’

Six-hat thinking

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:06 +0100

Sometimes amazing things happen in schools that remind you why you became a teacher in the first place. This is how I felt after I had visited Chantry Primary School in Luton on a ‘learning walk’.

The learning walk

The learning walk is the name given to a programme that invites teachers into Chantry Primary School so that staff can share with them what they are doing for a morning.

Day a Week School

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:05 +0100

The Day a Week School’s motto is ‘stretching minds and challenging thinking’; it provides a weekly learning programme for the top 2% KS2 students.

The model recognises the ‘every lesson, every day, every school’ principle of G&T provision, and the notion that better teaching for able pupils raises the standard of teaching and learning for all. It also recognises that the needs of exceptionally able pupils are difficult to meet in the normal classroom.

Thinking History: Questions, questions and more questions about questions!

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:04 +0100

What are NAGTY think tanks?

The National Academy of Gifted and Talented Youth think tanks are two-day events focusing on a particular subject area or element of education, where colleagues with significant expertise in a field are invited to work with NAGTY to look at areas in which schools could develop their work.
Each think tank session is chaired by a convenor with recognised expertise in the subject area.

Sharing best practice

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:29 +0100

You’ve been appointed as G&T coordinator, you’ve written your policy and delivered a whole-school Inset; how do you find your G&T holy grail – ensuring that G&T pupils are differentiated for in every classroom? Whatever the quality or range of the extra-curricular provision, the ideal scenario is the ‘inside-out’ method, where the onus is on every classroom teacher to implement strategies for G&T pupils (see Naomi Ferguson’s article in G&T Update issue 25, June 2005).

Problems with classroom observation