Differentiation Strategies for the Classroom An Emphasis for the GT Student Lisa Petrie GTE 691

SCENARIO: You have been assigned 31 students in 5th period. In this class, there are no IEPS but you realize quickly there are several different levels of students in this class. You do want to meet the needs of all students. Several student in this class are considered GT students. What does this mean for you?

GT Students are be careful of stereotypes.

When creating lesson plans for a class, we reflect of the needs of all students. What are the needs of GT students?

To look closer at the needs of gifted students, let’s dispel at some of the myths about gifted students.

“Gifted Students Don’t Need Help; They’ll Do Fine On Their Own” Would we expect Olympic athletes to train without a coach? Gifted students need guidance from well trained individuals to develop their skills.

“Gifted Students Make Everyone Else In The Class Smarter By Providing A Role Model Or A Challenge “ Average or below-average students do not look to the gifted students in the class as role models. Watching or relying on someone who is expected to succeed does little to increase a struggling student’s sense of self-confidence.2 Similarly, gifted students benefit from classroom interactions with peers at similar performance levels and become bored, frustrated, and unmotivated when placed in classrooms with low or average-ability students. students#sthash.xxJNFPg0.dpufhttp:// students#sthash.xxJNFPg0.dpuf

“All Children Are Gifted” All children have strengths and positive attributes, but not all children are gifted in the educational sense of the word. The label “gifted” in a school setting means that when compared to others his or her age or grade, a child has an advanced capacity to learn and apply what is learned in one or more subject areas, or in the performing or fine arts

Gifted Education Programs Are Elitist Gifted education programs are meant to help all high-ability students. Gifted learners are found in all cultures, ethnic backgrounds, and socioeconomic groups.

“That Student Can't Be Gifted, He Is Receiving Poor Grades” Underachievement describes a discrepancy between a student’s performance and his actual ability. The roots of this problem differ, based on each child’s experiences. Gifted students may become bored or frustrated in an unchallenging classroom situation causing them to lose interest, learn bad study habits, or distrust the school environment.

A fun way to look at this:

What now? Let’s take a look at differentiation to see how we can service our GT students in the classroom.

Choice Boards offer students a way to make decisions about what they will do in order to meet class requirements. They could be for a single lesson, a week long lesson, or even a month long period of study. Choice Boards

Setting Standards As with related strategies, it is important that no matter which choices students make, they must grapple with the key ideas and use the keys skills central to the topic or area of study. Making Choice Boards *Identify the most important elements of a lesson or unit. *Create required assignments or projects that reflect the minimum understanding you expect ALL students to achieve. *Minimal understandings often require students to go beyond the basic levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.

Examples: *Think-Tac-Toe plays off the familiar childhood game. It is a simple way to give students alternative ways of exploring and expressing key ideas and using key skills. *Typically, the Think-Tac-Toe grid has nine cells in it like a Tic-Tac-Toe game. The number of rows and cells can, of course, be adjusted.

Adaptations *Allow students to complete any 3 tasks--even if the completed tasks don't make a Tic-Tac-Toe. *Create assignments in rows and columns based on readiness. *Create a final optional section that requires students the opportunity for enrichment. The optional section often reflects activities that students can use for extra credit. *Create different Tic-Tac-Toe boards based on: *readiness *learning styles or learning preferences *Multiple Intelligences

A learning contract is a collaboratively written agreement between a student and a faculty member that delineates what is to be learned, how it will be learned, and how that learning will be evaluated.

There are many different ways to design a learning contract, incorporating as many or as few elements as you wish. Despite this flexibility, there is a general format which the majority of learning contracts follow: Identify what content will be learned. Specify the methods and strategies that will be used to learn the content. Specify resources to be used in order to learn the content. Specify the type of evidence that will be used to demonstrate learning. Specify how the evidence will be validated, and by whom.

Benefits of Learning Contracts The use of learning contracts leads students to become more self-directing and more responsible for their own learning. Learners are more apt to be involved and motivated in projects that they help to select, plan, design, and evaluate. Consequently, they take more responsibility for their learning, place less emphasis on competition with other students in the class, and become more personally involved with the material because of their personal commitment to its completion. Students, especially adult learners, learn material more deeply and permanently if they learn it through projects of their own choosing instead of being taught it. When students feel a sense of ownership over their learning, which includes what is being learned and how it is being learned, that learning takes place more deeply, and at a more personal level. To that end, learning that takes place under the auspices of a learning contract has been shown to transfer more completely to the workplace because of the relevance the in-class work took on when it was first completed. BenefitsWhy so?

Resources eLibrary/nagc_cubing__think_dots.pdf eLibrary/nagc_cubing__think_dots.pdf publications/resources/myths-about- gifted-students publications/resources/myths-about- gifted-students st-y_ptI st-y_ptI ollaboratory/Idea/contractbenefits.html ollaboratory/Idea/contractbenefits.html