Gifted education
Gifted education, talented and gifted programs is a type of education used for children who have been identified as gifted or talented.
The main approaches to gifted education are enrichment and acceleration. An enrichment program teaches additional, deeper material, but keeps the student progressing through the curriculum at the same rate as other students. For example, after the gifted students have completed the normal work in the curriculum, an enrichment program might provide them with additional information about a subject. An acceleration program advances the student through the standard curriculum faster than normal. This is normally done by having the students skip one to two grades.
Being gifted and talented usually means being able to score in the top percentile on IQ exams. The percentage of students selected varies, generally with 10% or fewer being selected for gifted education programs.
Forms
Attempts to provide gifted education can be classified in several ways. Most gifted students benefit from a combination of approaches at different times.Acceleration
People are advanced to a higher-level class covering material more suited to their abilities and preparedness. This may take the form of skipping grades or completing the normal curriculum in a shorter-than-normal period of time. Subject acceleration is a flexible approach that can advance a student in one subject, such as mathematics or language, without changing other studies, such as history or science. This type of acceleration is usually based upon achievement testing, rather than IQ.Some colleges offer early entrance programs that give gifted younger students the opportunity to attend college early. In the U.S., many community colleges allow advanced students to enroll with the consent of school officials and the pupil's parents.
Acceleration presents gifted children with academic material from established curricula that is commensurate with their ability and preparedness, and for this reason is a low-cost option from the perspective of the school. This may result in a small number of children taking classes targeted at older children. For the majority of gifted students, acceleration is beneficial both academically and socially. Whole grade skipping is considered rapid acceleration. Some advocates have argued that the disadvantages of being retained in a standard mixed-ability classroom are substantially worse than any shortcomings of acceleration. For example, psychologist Miraca Gross reports: "the majority of these children are socially rejected , isolated, and deeply unhappy. Children of IQ 180+ who are retained in the regular classroom are even more seriously at risk and experience severe emotional distress." These accelerated children should be placed together in one class if possible. Research suggests that acceleration might have an impact long after students graduate from high school. For example, one study shows that high-IQ individuals who experienced full-grade acceleration earned higher incomes as adults.
Cluster grouping
is the gathering of four to six gifted and talented and/or high achieving students in a single classroom for the entire school day. Cluster teachers are specially trained in differentiating for gifted learners. Clusters are typically used in upper elementary grades. Within a cluster group, instruction may include enrichment and extensions, higher-order thinking skills, pretesting and differentiation, compacting, an accelerated pace, and more complexity in content.Colloquium
Like acceleration, colloquium provides advanced material for high school students. In colloquium, students take Advanced Placement courses. However, colloquium is different from AP classes because students are usually given more projects than students in AP classes. Students in colloquium also generally study topics more in depth and sometimes in a different way than students enrolled in AP classes do. Colloquium is a form that takes place in a traditional public school. In colloquium, subjects are grouped together. Subjects are taught at different times of the day; however, usually what is being taught in one subject will connect with another subject. For example, if the students are learning about colonial America in History, then they might also be analyzing text from The Scarlet Letter in English. Some schools may only have colloquium in certain subjects. In schools where colloquium is only offered in English and History, colloquium students usually take Advanced Placement courses in math and science and vice versa.Compacting
In compacting, the regular school material is compacted by pretesting the student to establish which skills and content have already been mastered. Pretests can be presented on a daily basis, or before a week or longer unit of instructional time. When a student demonstrates an appropriate level of proficiency, further repetitive practice can be safely skipped, thus reducing boredom and freeing up time for the student to work on more challenging material.Enrichment
On the primary school level, students spend all class time with their peers, but receive extra material to challenge them. Enrichment may be as simple as a modified assignment provided by the regular classroom teacher, or it might include formal programs such as Odyssey of the Mind, Destination Imagination or academic competitions such as Brain Bowl, Future Problem Solving, Science Olympiad, National History Day, science fairs, or spelling bees. Programmes of enrichment activities may also be organised outside the school day. This work is done in addition to, and not instead of, any regular school work assigned. Critics of this approach argue that it requires gifted students to do more work instead of the same amount at an advanced level. On the secondary school level sometimes an option is to take more courses such as English, Spanish, Latin, philosophy, or science or to engage in extracurricular activities. Some perceive there to be a necessary choice between enrichment and acceleration, as if the two were mutually exclusive alternatives. However, other researchers see the two as complements to each other.Full-time separate classes or schools
Some gifted students are educated in either a separate class or a separate school. These classes and schools are sometimes called "congregated gifted programs" or "dedicated gifted programs."Some independent schools have a primary mission to serve the needs of the academically gifted. Such schools are relatively scarce and often difficult for families to locate. One resource for locating gifted schools in the United States can be found on the National Association for Gifted Children's resource directory accessible through their home page. Such schools often need to work to guard their mission from occasional charges of elitism, support the professional growth and training of their staff, write curriculum units that are specifically designed to meet the social, emotional, and academic talents of their students, and educate their parent population at all ages.
Some gifted and talented classes offer self-directed or individualized studies, where the students lead a class themselves and decide on their own task, tests, and all other assignments. These separate classes or schools tend to be more expensive than regular classes, due to smaller class sizes and lower student-to-teacher rations. Not-for-profit schools often can offer lower costs than for-profit schools. Either way, they are in high demand and parents often have to pay part of the costs.
Hobbies
Activities such as reading, creative writing, sport, computer games, chess, computer programming, music, dance, foreign languages, and art give an extra intellectual challenge outside of school hours.Homeschooling
An umbrella term encompassing a variety of educational activities conducted at home, including those for gifted children: part-time schooling; school at home; classes, groups, mentors and tutors; and unschooling. In many US states, the population of gifted students who are being homeschooled is rising quite rapidly, as school districts responding to budgetary issues and standards-based policies are cutting what limited gifted education programs remain in existence, and families seek educational opportunities that are tailored to each child's unique needs.Pull-out
Gifted students are pulled out of a heterogeneous classroom to spend a portion of their time in a gifted class. These programs vary widely, from carefully designed half-day academic programs to a single hour each week of educational challenges. Generally, these programs are ineffective at promoting academic advancement unless the material covered contains extensions and enrichment to the core curriculum. The majority of pull-out programs include an assortment of critical thinking drills, creative exercises, and subjects typically not introduced in standard curricula. Much of the material introduced in gifted pull-out programs deals with the study of logic, and its application to fields ranging from philosophy to mathematics. Students are encouraged to apply these empirical reasoning skills to every aspect of their education both in and outside of class.Self-pacing
Self-pacing methods, such as the Montessori Method, use flexible grouping practices to allow children to advance at their own pace. Self-pacing can be beneficial for all children and is not targeted specifically at those identified as gifted or talented, but it can allow children to learn at a highly accelerated rate. Directed Studies are usually based on self-pacing.Summer enrichment
These offer a variety of courses that mainly take place in the summer. Summer schools are popular in the United States. Entrance fees are required for such programs, and programs typically focus on one subject, or class, for the duration of the camp.Several examples of this type of program are:
- Center for Talented Youth
- CTYI
- GERI: Gifted Education Resource Institute, Purdue University
- Johns Hopkins University
- Center for Talent Development, Northwestern University
These classes are generally organized so that students have the opportunity to choose several courses they wish to participate in. Courses offered often vary between subjects, but are not typically strictly academically related to that subject. For example, a TAG course that could be offered in history could be the students learning about a certain event and then acting it out in a performance to be presented to parents on the last night of the program. These courses are designed to challenge the students to think in new ways and not merely to be lectured as they are in school.