Schooling Central

Hi, I have been appointed Gifted and Talented teacher in a small school in remote western Qld. I have one day a week with the children who have been nominated by their class teachers.
There is no whole school policy/program for these kids, so I am basically thinking on my feet and making it up as I go along. So far I have decided we will be participating in Opti-minds and the science challenge. I would like to hear from other schools about their whole school programs, and any activities or competitions etc that would be useful.
cheers,
Kim

Hi Kim,

It certainly sounds like you've been thrown in at the deep end! I'm certainly not an expert on teaching gifted children, however what I find important as a parent of a gifted child is that my son is given material that allows him to work through difficult problems and experience the thrill of success after hard work. Ideally this material should be sufficiently interesting to nurture his natural excitement and desire to learn.

Hopefully some teachers will come through and share their experiences with you. If you haven't seen it already the Queensland Department of Education website has some interesting information about forming gifted policies: http://www.learningplace.com.au/deliver/content.asp?pid=14450 . The Hoagies website also has many pages aimed at educators of gifted children: http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/educators.htm

Good luck with your class.

Annabel.

Hello Kim.

It's wonderful to hear that your school has had the vision to appoint your role! I know how you feel though because when I started in gifted education it was up to me to work out what and how I taught. Mind you, the advantage of this was the freedom I had to experiment. I agree with Annabel to use the net to find inspiration and teaching ideas.

You're welcome to look at my website to see my approach to gifted education in case that's useful. www.thinkingoutsidethebox.com.au

A competition I think can be extremely beneficial to gifted children is Tournament of the Minds. http://www.tom.edu.au/ It may well not be accessible to your school but you can use the ideas from their past competitions as a basis for stimulating classroom programs. The programs I've run in this style have been some of the most successful.

If I can help, please feel free to ask questions or chat about how things are going via this forum or email via my website (above).

Penny.

Thank you both for your replies. I will certainly enjoy checking out the websites you recommended. I have done a lot of thinking since I posted. I have decided to do the following - optiminds is very big out here in term 3, so I will run with that. In term 4 we will prepare and host a trivia night for parents (this has been done before and was very successful). this term we will participate in an on-line competition called 'Murder under the Microscope'. this has an environmental/science investigating type of slant. It looks good and comes with lots of teacher notes so I hope it works well.
Kim

Kim, it's a tough job without clear guidelines of what you should do. However it's also an opportunity for creativeness. After all great teachers are those who are creative and bold. I would say that you need to consolidate your knowledge on the syllabuses as the first step. You really need to spend time reading the education department's official syllabuses. Where you will find a gold mine of concrete ideas about outcomes. By carefully selecting the outcomes, you can build your own mind map of what should be done, then finally you can work on how to do them. This mind map can be brought forward for discussion with parents and other teachers to get team consensus. It's better to get parents to be on your side and push the kids along at home as well.

As for strategy, I would recommend you a strategy that I used for my own child. As I studied how humans acquired knowledge in my years at University, I have a pretty good idea how kids acquire knowledge. In fact year 1 science texts often mention the 5 senses as the major sources of information. That's more or less correct (until you start thinking about mathematics and "a priori" knowledge). That's why I always use very practical demonstration to creat first hand knowledge for my child. I taught her about 1st, 2nd and 3rd hand knowledge and graded the trustworthiness of these sources of knowledge. Obviously 1st hand experience is the most trust worthy source of knowledge. And you can only introduce that by using as much practical examples, experiments and demonstrations as possible in your teaching. Then you ask a lot of questions rather than giving answers to stimulate gifted kids to find the answers.

I can give you an example of my lesson about matter and atoms to my child at grade 2. I presented to her water as a "substance". The apple could be split, but water could not be split. Then I demonstrated how I split water to get Hydrogen using a simple set up with 9V DC pack, cooking salt and two metal pins as electrodes. My child could see that the electrical power has somehow broken up water. I got Hydrogen gas captured in a plastic cup. Then I showed her a small explosion when I lighted the gas with fire. Now my child is completely aware that water is made of Hydrogen and Oxygen. She knows now that elements change their properties when they combine to form substances. And from the first hand experience so many questions flow. She got to know quickly about elements, chemical reactions, energy flow, ... The true beauty was that she learned all this as first hand experience rather 2nd hand knowledge from books that only talk about it theoretically. So at grade 3, she already knew basic ideas about atomic theory, molecules, matter versus spirit and how dangerous the nuclear bomb was. And yes, grade 2 and 3 kids can take all this!

Generally gifted kids should be taught the scientific method. In mathematics they should be taught to investigate properties of numbers, logical deduction and other simple ideas in modern mathemathics beside dwelling more into arithmetic.