Highly Gifted Students—Free Resources for Educators and Other Professionals

The Educators Guild at the Davidson Institute for Talent Development is a FREE online community for elementary, secondary and post-secondary educators, as well as other professionals committed to meeting the unique needs of highly gifted students.

Online Community

·         eList—an electronic (email) discussion group where gifted and talented teachers and administrators network with one another.

·         Discussion Group on Facebook—anyone interested in gifted education, is invited to join and contribute to the ongoing conversation about how to best serve the academic needs of our nation’s brightest students.

·         eNewsletter—The Educators Guild Newsletter contains information on the latest articles, resources and news pertaining specifically to gifted and talented teachers and administrators.

Presentations—a library of suggested topics along with PDFs and supplemental articles.

Resources—an annotated list of suggested books, articles, gifted organizations, gifted education degree programs, and gifted state policy.

The Museum of Mathematics—Great Resource

The Museum of Mathematics (MoMath) in New York City is the only museum in the United States dedicated strictly to mathematics. The exhibits and programs at MoMath are designed to stimulate inquiry, spark curiosity, and reveal the wonders of mathematics. Whether or not you are able to visit this fantastic museum, you can take advantage of some of its offerings.

Math Mondays is a partnership between MoMath and the magazine, Make: Online. The weekly column includes fun, experiential, puzzling topics in mathematics. Many of these are actual puzzles one can construct. This column will keep students involved with complex and innovative creations that will stretch their minds.

MoMath also has an online store that sells a variety of mathematical games, books, DVDs, toys, and puzzles that are worth considering.

Parenting and Teaching Young Gifted Children

In her article, Differentiated Instruction for Young GiftedChildren: How Parents Can Help, Joan Smutny does an excellent job of explaining strategies that can be used in the classroom to address the needs of young gifted children, including

• Compacting—Children skip content that they already know and move to more advanced work.
• Learning Stations—Areas of the classroom where students can work on different tasks within a unit. Each station may represent a higher level of complexity than the one before it. Students move freely from one task to the next.
• Tiered Activities—A classroom of children may focus on the same, broad learning goal, but at different levels of depth and complexity.
• Clustering—Students who are significantly ahead are grouped and provided with more advanced content.

The best parts of Smutny’s article, though, are the many quotes and stories about children she uses to illustrate her points. She not only explains the strategies that might be used in the classroom to differentiate instruction, but also shows parents how they can enhance their children’s learning at home and also support and get involved with student learning at school.

From this article, both parents and teachers will get ideas about ways they can form better partnerships to enhance the learning of young gifted students.

Smutny has made young gifted children one of her specialties. If you like her article mentioned here, you will probably also enjoy some of the many books that she has written on the subject. You will find these by going to web sites such as Amazon and typing in her name or doing a general Internet search using her name.