How to Spot a Gifted Kid

 

Spotting A Gifted Kid

     How to spot a gifted child?  I can honestly say this is the most challenging thing to do as an educator.  Students who are extremely bright may not always show the signs that we as educators classify as gifted.  We are really great at identifying our "high flyers", but Gifted students may not always be our typical idea of what Gifted means.  

     Being a Gifted teacher, I can honestly say that there are a lot of challenges that Gifted students face.  I see a lot of asynchronous behavior where they have a retention and acquisition level that is higher than other students, but they cannot interact appropriately with their same age peers.  They may also not show their work, are easily distracted, and are extremely unorganized.  This is not all Gifted students, but some of these behaviors will help with identification. The resource below is a great read on identifying a Gifted student.  As much as I would like to say identification is easy, that could not be farther from the truth.  We all get it wrong sometimes, but it is better to have them tested if you think they are Gifted, than to let them fall through the cracks.   

How to spot a Gifted Student: TeachersFirst. (2021). Teachers First, Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers. https://www.teachersfirst.com/gifted_spot.cfm    

Here are just a few that you will read about through this link that will put things into perspective a little more. 

What Do I Do When I Think I Have Spotted A Gifted Kid?

     When you think you have a Gifted child in your class the best thing to do is talk to your Principal and Gifted support staff.  The process may be different based upon your school district, but here is what our school district does.  When you think there is a child who is Gifted, you have to add their name to the Child Study team.  Now we know how long that process can take once a child's name is submitted to the Child Study team.  A faster way to approach this as their teacher is to notify the parents.  

     Making a phone call home to the parents can start the process a lot quicker. When you talk with the parents, make sure you start out by stating that you see some tendencies of potential "Gifted qualities" in their child, and testing is a great way to be certain of this.  Make sure that you let them know that this does not mean that they will qualify, but that it will help you as an educator get a better understanding of their abilities.  If they are on board with having their child tested, have the parents send in a written parental note or email stating that they would like to have their child tested for Gifted Programming.  This process will put things into motion, and you won't even have to worry about a Child Study team process. 

     Once you receive the parental request for Gifted testing, the notice gets passed along to the School Psychologist and the Gifted Screener in the district.  From there they have 60 days to have the child tested. 

What to do with the Results?

     Once you have the results you can use them in one of two ways. If the child does qualify for Gifted services, then you will have a GIEP with goals in their strength areas. The SDI's will help you to differentiate within the classroom.  If they do not qualify, that does not mean that you will not differentiate. The results of the tests indicate IQ and areas where they may be higher or lower in. Based upon those test results, you can place them within the classroom. You will be able to give them challenge in areas where they were stronger, and support them in areas they were lower. It can help with WIN groups, stations, and academic support groups if needed.  Either way, the testing process will help you to better reach this particular child's needs.  

Have you ever identified a Gifted Child?

     Have you ever had the opportunity to identify a Gifted Child?  I would love to know what the outcome was if you did.   The feedback on how you identified them, what made them stand out in comparison to their peers, and the key factors you were looking for is extremely beneficial to all educators. 

Opportunities All Around

 

Field Trips

  Now I have never known a student who does not want to attend a field trip. Every student enjoys the opportunity to take a break from day-to-day school work and get out into the community.  You would be surprised the amount of educational field trip opportunities there are for students. I am extremely lucky as an educator because our Gifted program offers an abundant amount of opportunities throughout the year for our students to participate in. It gives our kids an opportunity to get out into the community for some real life experiences and challenges.

  Our district is in a partnership with the Tom Ridge Environmental Center (TREC) in Erie, PA.  Even though the commute to get to most of these activities are about an hour in a half away, it is well worth the extra hours in the day to give these kids those opportunities.  In the rest of this blog you will read about individual opportunities that our students have had over the past few years. Feel free to do some research and see what offerings are available in your areas, not only for Gifted students, but your classroom kids as well. 

K'Nex Challenge

  The K'Nex Challenge is offered state wide for students to participate in.  Each year there are new requirements for different age levels. Those requirements include a budget, design process,  blueprints, model that works, teamwork, journaling, and presentations. Our students are willing to give up their time during their lunch, recess, and even after school in order to work on these projects. The commitment I see from these kids and the motivation they have make it worth while. Each year they update the STEM design challenge and parameters for requirements. Check it out for yourself in the second link below for a chance to see what challenge they had this year. Your local IU (Intermediate Unit) typically supports this program if you are looking for further resources. 

  Warren County 2019 Competition - Note 2020 it got cancelled and 2021 we were not allowed field trips

https://www.timesobserver.com/news/community/2019/03/were-no-1/ 

K'Nex Design Challenge Link

https://www.iu17.org/curriculum/stem/2017-stem-design-challenge-featuring-knex-regional-competition-2/

Mathcounts

  For all of those math lovers out there Mathcounts is the way to go. This competition is one of the most intense things I have ever sat through. The speed round is absolutely unbelievable with the how quickly a student can answer a math problem. In less time it takes the proctor to read the question, some of the kids already have the answers to the questions.  It is truly eye opening to see how spectacular and talented kids are from all over PA. It says a lot when students are willing to get up at 6am on a Saturday to go to Gannon University to do math all day long. My first year with my students I had one kid score 15th. That is incredible to be in the top 15. He was only 5 spots away from making it into the speed round for top ten

   https://www.timesobserver.com/news/community/2019/03/eisenhowers-jensen-15th-out-of-136-mathcounts-participants/ 

  My second year there I had a student score 11th.  I was so proud of his hard work and efforts. You should have seen the smile on his face for placing one away from top ten. When I asked him if he wanted to do it again next year you could see his eyes light up as he said "oh yeah!".  Unfortunately with COVID this year the time we had to prep for the virtual competition was limited and was a lot more challenging for some of the students. It was still a great opportunity that my students had to show their strengths in math. 

"Shipwreck B-Wet" Research Project

  The "Shipwreck B-Wet" project was another great opportunity our kids had for a challenge. TREC was offering this project to our students to research, create presentations on shipwrecks in Erie, PA, 3D print models, and learn how to scuba dive to search for ships below the surface. Our students had such a blast with all of this. They were extremely engaged in the process the entire time. This project was spread out over the months of October to March.  Luckily we got to scuba dive the day we found out our school was shutting down for COVID in 2020. Our students were lucky enough to go to our local YMCA, try on scuba gear, and dive for articles on the bottom. This was the final step in the project that made all of the effort worth it. I can honestly say I was right there in the pool with them. I was scuba diving and having a blast learning how to mathematically locate debris and shipwrect content, as well as measure below the surface. 

  https://www.timesobserver.com/news/local-news/2020/03/diving-to-learn/ 

Hack-a-Thon

  The Hack-a-Thon is hosted every year by the Regional Science Consortium in Erie, Pa. Every year there is some sort of mystery murder that takes place and students have to figure out who the the true murderer is. They utilize fingerprinting, DNA analysis, questioning witnesses, and so on to discover who the true killer was. The kids get so into the experience that they truly feel like they are the detective on the case. They get to use scientific technology where they become forensic analysts who have limited time to figure out who murdered the victim. This past year with COVID, they were nice enough to send materials to our school so we could host it virtually within the classroom. It was such a great learning experience and opportunity.

  https://www.regsciconsort.com/resources/educational-opportunities/hack-a-thon/

Escape Room

   The Escape Room is also hosted by the Regional Science Consortium. They offer an opportunity for students to come up and try to solve a real world problem. It is not your typical "Escape Room" where you have to break out, but you have to solve a problem that is facing our environment, create a solution, and present it. My first year teaching they had to solve the Bee Pollination problem. The second year they had create an environmentally friendly school, and this year they had to create some form of wetland, marsh or bog around the schools in order to solve a problem such as flooding or erosion. The kids enjoyed researching, designing, and creating a presentation to promote their design for sales. 

Challenge 24

  Challenge 24 is a fun game where students have to use all 4 numbers located on the card in order to make a total of 24. They can use addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division in order to get there. There are some rules involved that students must adhere to thought. They are only given 15 seconds on each card to solve it. They are penalized for mathematical mistakes that could remove them from the rest of the game in a competition when responding to a card. Also, they are only given 3 seconds to start their responses for their answer and all answers but be stated last step first. Once they state the last step, then they are to walk through the whole process to get there. They are only allowed a certain amount of time for the whole round of competition and they can only tap the card with one to three fingers. That is a lot for kids to remember, let alone the math portion as well. This is a great challenge for our math lovers out there though. We had the opportunity to host a smaller district competition this year due to COVID, but typically it is hosted by the IU5 for us. 

  https://www.timesobserver.com/news/local-news/2021/06/wcsd-holds-challenge-24-tournament/

Review

  Here are a few more that we have had the chance to participate in over the past three years. 

• Governor's STEM Competition
• Women In Engineering-TREC
• College Prep Program- TREC/Gannon University
• Erie Maritime Museum History/Exploration
• Sail the Brig Niagara
• Sphero Educational Day- Create a Parade 

  These are just a few of the opportunities that our students have had. There are still so many wonderful field trips, opportunities, and challenges out there that are waiting for them. Get your kids involved in these and have them take the next step to challenge their everyday thinking!

  

What is a GIEP?

 

GIEP

  What is a GIEP?  Surprisingly, there are many educators that have no idea what GIEP stands for, or what it is.  GIEP stands for Gifted Individualized Education Plan.  This is a similar document to an IEP, Individualized Education Plan for Special Education, with only one slight difference. The difference between a GIEP and an IEP is that a GIEP is a strength based document, and an IEP is a needs based document. When a student qualifies for an IEP, it is put into place to help support the "needs" of the learner.  In contrast, a GIEP is put into place for a qualifying student in their area of "strength".  

  Students with a GIEP typically have goals in the areas of Science, Math, and ELA, but they can incorporate them into other areas as well if need be.  What do you mean by "strength" based?  This means that if a student excels in Math, then they have a goal stating that they can receive enrichment when certain mastery or need is displayed.  This makes it so that teachers will provide more challenge and differentiation based upon that particular strength of the student.   

SDI's

  An SDI is something you will see on both an IEP and a GIEP.  This stands for "Specially Designed Instruction".  As a teacher this is the most important for you to try to follow.  This is where we place the type of differentiating instruction and frequency for each individual student.  

  As a teacher you may see an SDI for a gifted student that states, "Johnny will receive enrichment in Math that includes but is not limited to: assigning more challenging problems first, pairing with like ability peers, pre-testing to eliminate mastered content, alternate or more challenging assignments, and student choice." The frequency with this would be "as need where mastery is shown or demonstrated. "  These are how I set up some of my GIEP's for my students.  It allows a variety of differentiating methods based upon data for the teacher to incorporate. Sometimes we even add in there "per student advocacy".  This helps the teacher out by making older students more responsible in their learning. If they feel they need more of a challenge, they are to ask for that and advocate for themselves.  

Should you Pretest? 

  The number one thing as an educator that we always fall back onto is data collection.  I am continually collecting data through CDT testing, Acadience, Pre-tests, ST data, PSSA results, Keystone results, and so on.  As both a regular education teacher and a Gifted teacher, I cannot stress the importance of pre-testing. I know that this takes time and energy to grade, but it will help both you as an educator and your students succeed.  Yes pre-testing is time consuming, and most of the time there is a vast majority of kids that do not do even remotely well on them.  Keep in mind that there are some students who may surprise you with certain content that may be taught.  

  The advantage of a pre-test will help you know what students know already, and the areas that they still need to learn. If you have many students passing the pre-test, it will help to eliminate content that needs to be taught.  The worst thing is having a student sit through a lesson bored to death because they knew how to do it already.  It is good to identify who those students are, so that once the lesson begins for your other students, you can give them an alternate activity.  I have had students completely test out of content and teachers do not know what to do with that.  This does not mean that they are excused from your two weeks worth of lessons for that chapter. This just means that you can assign them more challenging work, projects, or activities with similar content to the lesson. If you ever ask yourself if you need to pre-test, please just think about your higher level students and you will automatically say yes. The data you gather may surprise you with your kids academic abilities. 

Gifted Misconceptions

  There are many misconceptions about Gifted students. Take a look at these two websites that list a few of them including "Gifted kids don't need help, they always get good grades, they are all the same, and teachers love having Gifted kids in their classrooms." 

    https://educationaladvancement.org/blog-myths-gifted-         kids/ https://www.nagc.org/myths-about-gifted-students

  One thing we need to keep in mind is that our Gifted students are gifted ALL the time. They are not only needing challenge when the Gifted teacher offers it a few times a week. We need to meet their need for challenge all the time, so that we do not fail them as educators. 

 

Resources to get started

Here are some great resources to get you started for Gifted Education. https://padlet.com/psemicek/GiftedAdmin

Podcasts: https://www.mindmatterspodcast.com/home?offset=1554326965581

Gifted Movie (great for gifted students/families)"Gifted": 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7CAjpdRaXU

Dual Exceptionalities (great read): https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/10/16/769397697/gifted-students-with-autism-find-an-intellectual-oasis-in-iowa!

Gifted Movie (great for gifted students/families)"Gifted": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7CAjpdRaXU 

 

 

Gifted In The Classroom

ENRICHMENT

What does it truly mean to enrich?  This was a concept that I knew about, but would tend to push to the back of my priority list.  Ever since I became a Gifted teacher, I have seen how much of an impact enrichment has for your high achieving students.  When we think about differentiating in the classroom our minds go directly to the lower level students who are underperforming, or who have some sort of an IEP or 504 plan.  Gifted students also need differentiating.  They lie on the same bell curve as your regular education students and your lower level students. Gifted students just happen to be on the other side of that bell curve.  These students are the ones who most of the time do not need to study or show work, and have asynchronous behaviors.  Here is what you need to know about Gifted students, and some resources I have been using to better meet their needs. 

THE BELL CURVE

The bell curve shown above lists off the typical IQ for students. The average student has an IQ between 85 and 120.  Our students with LD typically fall below the 85 marker for IQ.  Our higher achieving students range above 120 to about 129.  For our Gifted students, they range from 130 or higher. These are the Gifted and Genius classifications for IQ.  These students are not just "smart",  they think differently, abstractly, and can reason in ways that most cannot even comprehend.  These students deserve to have alternate or differentiated assignments to meet these needs. 

Logic Puzzles and Brain Teasers

Logic puzzles and brain teasers are a great way to challenge these Gifted students and higher level students.  They allow for the students to think abstractly using reasoning skills and critical thinking in order to solve them.  They come up with creative ways to solve these brain teasers and puzzles that sometimes we struggle to even solve. 

Breakout Edu

The Breakout Edu is a creative resource that allows you to create a breakout within your classroom.  Instead of breaking out of the room, they have to break into boxes or locked bags by thinking outside the box to solve riddles and content related puzzles.  They solve different styles of locks including directional, number, word, key, and color locks.  There are Breakouts that are already created that you can buy that are included in the yearly subscription.  You have access to hundreds of content related breakouts including Professional Development, Science, Math, ELA, Team Building, and so on. They even have online Breakouts now that are all digital for those online learners at home. This resource is a fun and challenging way to get your Gifted kids to really think outside the box. 

I am continually looking for new resources to utilize for that extra challenge for my Gifted kids. I am open to any suggestions for resources that have worked best for you in your classrooms.  Meeting our higher level learners is a challenge, but is needed for the success and growth of the student. Check out this great resource to educate you on Gifted content. Gifted Resource Link