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