Literacy Resources for Gifted Kids (and Their Parents)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Need some book recommendations for your children? Excellent lists of worthwhile books can be found at

• Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) publishes lists of award-winning books for young people, including Newbery and Caldecott winners.
• International Reading Association provides “Choices” reading lists. These are books chosen as favorites by children, young adults, teachers, and librarians around the country.
• EDSITEment's Recommended Reading List for College-Bound Students offers a list from the National Endowment for the Humanities, along with suggestions for study and discussion of each book.
• Classic Novels offers one of many lists of the classics available on the Internet. This list was compiled by the Cincinnati Public Library. If your student owns an eReader (Kindle, Nook, etc.), many of the classics can be downloaded for free.

 

In addition to reading good books, children may enjoy creating their own books. There are a number of websites to help with this. One such site is Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord’s Making Books with Children, which lists resources, ideas for teachers, and ideas for families.

Teaching Students to Write Well

 

The ability to write well is one of the major gateways to a successful education and to career advancement. It is also a tool that helps one sort through and analyze personal thoughts, express oneself effectively, and act as a stress reducer when faced with difficult physical and psychological issues in life.

Watch the video of Steve Graham discussing the importance of learning to write well.

Writing is most effectively developed when it is taught across all subjects—not just those in the field of language arts. Unfortunately, not enough teachers are sufficiently prepared to teach writing.

The National Writing Project (NWP) is one resource filled with ideas and opportunities to remedy this situation. There are currently more than 200 university-based writing project sites that provide high quality professional development and leadership opportunities to more than 100,000 K-16 educators every year. Many NWP sites offer special writing programs for children. For tips on helping children learn to write and how to support good writing instruction in schools, click on the Resources tab at the top of the NWP website.

Parents, remember that you can also play an important part in teaching your children to write. Check out the resources about and consider how you might use those at home.

Places to Publish for Gifted Young Writers

Gifted students need “real” audiences for their work. They benefit from seeing their words in print and finding others who have the same interest.

Figment is a place where young people, ages 13 and up, share their writing, connect with other people with similar interests, and discover new stories and authors. The website was started by Dana Goodyear, a staff writer at The New Yorker, and Jacob Lewis, the former Managing Editor at The New Yorker and Condé Nast Portfolio. It contains a variety of sections that will be of interest to young authors, including

• A place where students can post their writing and get feedback in the form of comments and reviews.
• Writing contests.
• Advice from adults who publish young adult books.
• Recommendations of recently published books for young adults.
• A forum where students can connect on a variety of subjects related to their writing.
• A blog that, among other things, contains interviews with published authors of books for young adults.

If your young writer is more independent, suggest that he submit his writing for publication without the feedback and interaction of a group. A Young Authors Guide from NewPages.com provides

• Updated lists of publications that accept submissions from young people, some from children as young as eight.
• A long list of writing contests, listed by month.
• Information about writing programs.
• A list of writing conferences.

Vocabulary Development for Gifted Students

Advanced vocabulary development is essential for students for many reasons. It not only helps them excel at college admissions tests, it also helps them succeed in a wide variety of endeavors. For example:

• Increasing vocabulary encourages the use of more descriptive words when writing or speaking and enables one to communicate thoughts more clearly.
• Understanding the meaning of a wide range of words enables better reading comprehension, thus increasing retention.
• A large vocabulary helps verbal communication flow smoothly and eliminates unnecessary noises such as "umm" and "uhh" when speaking.
• Using richer and more colorful words projects a more intelligent image.
• Having the right vocabulary for planning and solving problems helps students maximize their thinking skills.

There are many ways that students can increase their storehouse of words. They can

• increase their vocabulary significantly by reading widely and actively, noticing and looking up new words as they read. Students should also seek out classics and other books that require them to pay close attention and think deeply about language and ideas.
• explore fun and relaxing ways to learn new words, such as solving crossword puzzles and playing word games. These activities help students to not only learn new words, but also learn alternative meanings for words.
• deepen their vocabulary further by studying the meanings of root words, as well as prefixes and suffixes. These devices help students intelligently guess the meanings of words that they do not already know. They also help students gain a broad understanding of language.
• experiment with the words by using a thesaurus when while writing. Young people will not only learn new words this way, but they will also gain a richer appreciation for choosing the right word in a sentence.

 

The following websites represent just a few of the online activities that encourage students' vocabulary development:

• FunBrain: Rooting Out Words has good exercises for students in elementary and middle school.
• Language Arts Games features a variety of vocabulary games for all ages, ranging from simple games for elementary school students to advanced games and quizzes for high school students who are studying for the SAT and ACT.
• Number2.com offers free online test preparation, including a vocabulary builder. This website includes practice sessions that adapt to a student's ability level. The website requires students to set up a free account.
• SuperKids: PSAT and SAT Vocabulary Flashcards and Matching Games allows students to study and learn more than 1,000 words that are frequently found on the PSAT and SAT exams.
• Word Games From Merriam-Webster has more than a dozen different online word games that students may enjoy.

Journalism for Serious Students

The way in which we absorb news is morphing, with a heavy emphasis on technology. As journalism changes, newspapers remain important primary document resources. Archives of print media help us trace trends and ideas in history. There are numerous resources available to teach students about the value of journalism and how to be critical consumers of news. Here are a few.

• Newseum is an interactive museum in Washington D.C. that offers five centuries of news history. There are also links at the Newseum website that have good teaching tools. Under the Education link, the section titled Resources for Teachers has some great lesson plans for grades 6-12 that highlight the headlines and front pages of newspapers. Today’s Front Pages is a very interesting section where you will find the day’s front pages from more than 800 newspapers around the world.
• Hsj.org/ is a wonderful resource for learning and teaching all aspects of journalism. The High School Journalism: Lesson Archive section contains lots of ideas to teach about advertising, bias, copy editing, critical thinking about the media, decision-making, design, diversity, editing, editorial cartoons, editorial writing, entertainment journalism, features, First Amendment, graphics and design, interviewing, journalism ethics, journalism history, libel, news values, online journalism, photography, reporting, story ideas, and more.
• The New York Times Daily Lesson Plan is an archive of lesson plans that blends daily news with higher-level thinking skills. The site contains excellent ideas for teaching students to analyze what they read and see. The site also contains a parent section with discussion ideas.

Is your student interested in a career in journalism? If so, check out the Broadcast Media and Journalism Career Guide.

Simulation Curricula Adds Spark to Learning

Interact is a publisher that offers curricula that is unique and creative. The units often are used as supplements in the regular classroom but can also be used in enrichment classes. Many of the units involve interaction between students through simulations. Interact curricula can be used successfully in classrooms that consist of many different abilities. I knew one teacher who always had an Interact simulation going in his classroom. His students (including the gifted students) were so excited to go to school each day to work on the activities.

Each Interact unit includes a teacher's guide, purpose and overview, daily lesson plans, student materials, time management guidelines, and support materials.

Unit subjects include math, science, language arts, U.S. history, world history, government & law, global education/geography, business & economics, and character education. There are units available for all grade levels, elementary through high school.

A few examples are

Character Matters

Grades 1–4

Up to 20 hours for preparation, planning, and performance

Description: Welcome to a monthly meeting of the Fairy Tale Advice Council. Led by Rapunzel, a handsome prince, and a recovering wicked witch, the council offers help in character building to folk and fairy tale creatures. In this fun and humorous musical, the Big Bad Wolf learns the Golden Rule, Cinderella gets help in managing her anger at her bullying stepsisters, and Jack and the Giant discover that their differences are cool. Will Humpty Dumpty take responsibility for his fall? Can Baby Bear forgive Goldilocks? And will the magic mirrors tell the evil queen the truth about who is "the fairest of them all?"

Game Factory

Grades 3–7

A flexible structure allows for lengthening or shortening the time required

Description: Cheatum Swindle is running the Goodwin's game factory into the ground by producing unfair games, and it's up to your students to use their arithmetic skills to save the company! Students work in pairs performing hands-on experiments with spinners, dice, coins, and cards to test the probabilities of Cheatum's games. The flip of a coin or the roll of the die determines the moves they make as they advance through the factory, examining games for fairness. As they find problems, they make modifications and record reasons for their decisions. In the final push to save the company's reputation, student pairs design their own games and present them with an explanation of their fairness.

Black Gold

Grades 5–8

Up to 15 hours of instruction

Description: Black Gold is a challenging, multi-disciplinary study of petroleum and our reliance upon this vanishing fossil fuel. The science, geography, research, mathematics, and language arts activities center around the global dynamics of petroleum production and consumption. Your students will

• create a map of the world showing the magnitude of petroleum reserves and consumption, and trace major transportation routes and techniques;
• use a variety of research tools, analyze information, and present and defend their conclusion;
• buy and sell crude oil at a commodity market (at their desks or via e-mail); and
• devise techniques to clean up a disastrous oil spill.

Gifted History Students Publishing Academic Papers

 

When I took my first advanced history course in college, the president of the university (a history buff himself) spoke to our class and encouraged us to submit our papers to various journals for publication. Before that, it had never occurred to me to submit any of my writing for publication. In my mind, I was "just" a student and never thought of anyone beyond an instructor being interested in my work.

Now it is possible not only for college students to publish their work, but for serious high school history students to publish the papers that they have researched. The Concord Review gives young people this opportunity. The Review is the only quarterly journal in the world to publish the academic expository research papers of secondary history students. Papers may be on any historical topic, ancient or modern, foreign or domestic, and may be submitted in two categories: short (1,500-2,500 words) and long (4,000-6,000 words).

Many of these young authors have included reprints of their papers with their college application materials. Their research has helped them to gain admission to some of the nation’s (and world’s) best universities.

High school teachers also use The Concord Review in their classes to provide examples of good historical writing. What a wonderful opportunity for students to see the work of age peers who have taken academics to a higher level.

The Concord Review website houses a large sampling of essays for both students and teachers to view so they can get an idea of the quality of work accepted.

At this site, you also will find information about The National Writing Board, an independent assessment service for the academic writing of high school students of history. Each submission is assessed by two readers who know nothing about the author. These readers spend more than 3 hours on each paper. Three or four page evaluations, with scores and comments, are then sent, at the request of the authors, to Deans of Admissions at the colleges to which they apply.