Drill and kill, test prep, reviewing material… these all go against the ideals of your gifted classroom.

Yet it would be a disservice for your kids to head into a high-stakes test without the utmost preparation, right?

Accelerate!

Take your review to Mach speed by implementing a quick, rotating center activity. Give your students 6-8 review activities and let them spend a few minutes at each activity before rotating them along. Keep the time just a little short for the activity. The time pressure keeps them interested and I always let them have a few minutes of “catch up” time to finish the activities.

This self-running, speed oriented review also frees you up to meet with anyone who needs more intensive review.

Plus, it’s fun to hear the kids yell “oh no!” as the timer reaches zero for each activity.

Think Like A Test Writer

A Poison Mushroom

To help my gifted learners do their best, we discuss how test makers plan wrong answers. We analyze how the wrong answers aren’t simply random guesses on a multiple choice test. Each one has a purpose and a special way to ensnare unsuspecting students.

What educators call “attractive distractors,” we dub “poison mushrooms” (after the lethal power-up from the Super Mario Bros series). Although it may look attractive, it’s really designed to trick students into picking it.

When I give a test-prep question, the class solves for the correct answer, but each student also comes up with a “poison mushroom” answer. It’s amazing how quickly they develop the skill of designing these answers (it’s also hilarious to hear students moan about “picking the poison mushroom” when I return tests).

Reflection

Students who are aware of their strengths and weaknesses throughout the year will be better at preparing for a test. My students who know they struggled with fractions can more efficiently study and practice. This self-awareness is a result of reflection.

Reflection is a year-long practice that I have also touched on here and mentioned here.

Asking “what do you think you need to focus on” puts the ball in your students’ court and gives them ownership of the test-prep process. It also builds a life-long skill of self-awareness and self-improvement.

Reality Check

Since gifted learners easily turn into stress machines, I also have a “reality check” talk with my class. We discuss the reality of tests in life (I recount the scores of tests required to earn a teaching credential) but we also explore ways to deal with tests – relaxation techniques, taking breaks, using the process of elimination, and simply remaining confident. In the end, I remind them our tests are simply a way of measuring how much they’ve learned throughout the year. Last minute cramming and late night worrying are not necessary nor helpful.

Any Tips?

Any ways that you prep for end-of-year testing with your gifted class? Any activities to keep the weeks of testing enjoyable rather than dreadful? Please share in the comments!

What’s Test Prep Like In A Gifted Class? is a post from: Byrdseed Gifted

Related posts:

1. Differentiating Within A Gifted Classroom
2. Differentiating Math Lessons For Gifted Students
3. Google’s 20% In A Gifted Classroom

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow

Are your gifted learners bored?

Feeling frustrated with their apathy?

Perhaps your students are over-excited, experiencing anxiety and worry.

Flow

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work on “flow” (in the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience) attributes these feelings to a mismatch of challenge and skill levels.

Students with a low skill-level working with a low level of challenge are destined to be apathetic.

Pump up the challenge without increasing skill and your students become worried and anxious.

Correctly matching a student’s level of skill with an appropriate challenge leads to flow – more commonly known in sports as “being in the zone.”

And if you’ve ever seen a student working “in the zone,” it is a beautiful thing. How can we get them there?

Ways To Move Students Towards Flow

• Adjust Bloom’s Taxonomy appropriately.
• Increase depth or complexity.
• Move towards authentic problems.
• Offer novel choices.
• Utilize a different model of instruction.
• Connect subject matter across the disciplines.

It’s Our Job

It’s our job to draw out the excited learner inside our gifted students. Finding the right connection of skill and challenge is one way to accomplish this.

From Apathy To Flow is a post from: Byrdseed Gifted

Related posts:

1. Differentiating Within A Gifted Classroom
2. What’s Test Prep Like In A Gifted Class?
3. Transforming Textbook Questions

From a slideshow at Time.com (via Kottke.org)

How long did it take you to focus on the state of his desk.

Can you imagine asking Albert Einstein to “work on his organization?”

What a waste of his time and talents, right?

Instead we recognize his unmatched creativity, intelligence, and scientific understanding.

Let’s make sure we do the same for our gifted students.

John Wooden (legendary college basketball coach) said it well: “young people need models, not critics.”

A Mess On Einstein’s Desk is a post from: Byrdseed Gifted

Related posts:

1. Failures!
2. Do I Have To Work In A Group?

Academically or intellectually GT students tend to be uncomfortable taking risks or dealing with ambiguity;

Dr. Karen Rogers, Research Synthesis on Gifted Provisions

Risk-taking (the one that is accompanied by external prodding) is often more acceptable for younger children than older ones.

James Delisle, Risk-taking and Risk-making

Help your students cope with failure by introducing these famous, successful people who have developed a positive attitude towards their own failures.

Michael Jordan

I’ve missed more than nine thousand shots in my career. I’ve lost almost three hundred games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

Michael Jordan from this Nike commercial

Steve Jobs

I was a very public failure… I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

Steve Jobs, 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech

J.K. Rowling

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

J.K. Rowling, Harvard Commencement Speech

Implementation

Consider asking students to prove the following statements with evidence from research:

• Failure can be either positive and negative.
• Failure can lead to success.
• Successful people experience failure.

Or consider having your students generate their own generalizations.

Failures! is a post from: Byrdseed Gifted

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1. A Mess On Einstein’s Desk
2. 10 Social & Emotional Needs of the Gifted
3. Transforming Textbook Questions

Do I have to work in a group?

Of course, I thought I was doing my students a favor by giving them time to work together on an assignment. Interaction, collaboration, a break from listening and a chance to discuss – all positives for students, right? Yet, here was a student who preferred to work alone.

She wasn’t anti-social. She wasn’t unpopular. She wasn’t lonely.

She just wanted to work by herself this time.

Letting Go Of Assumptions

I realized that group size was another way I could differentiate for my gifted students’ diverse needs. I now make sure I include times throughout the day where students can choose to work alone or in pairs or in trios.

As I learned to differentiate in a new way, it certainly made me consider what other options would improve my students’ learning enviornment. Because that’s really what this young person was asking me to do.

I’ve realized:

• Some students (especially among the gifted) are introverted and simply need time to work alone.
• Not everyone thinks creating a multimedia computer project is enjoyable.
• Given a wide range of options, some students will pick the five paragraph essay!

Now certainly, there are many times during the day when students have to take the one choice I give them. But I’m certainly glad that student was brave enough to ask me if she could work alone. It reminded me to truly think from the point of view of my students.

And that has made me a better teacher.

Do I Have To Work In A Group? is a post from: Byrdseed Gifted

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1. Four Ways to Differentiate Objectives
2. Differentiating Math Lessons For Gifted Students
3. 3 Ways Teachers Battle Students’ Giftedness

How easy is it to forget that our gifted learners have truly unique needs? How easy is it to plan lessons straight from our textbooks and use unaltered pedagogy from our credential programs?

This amazing article by Dr. Karen Rogers reminded me of three counter-intuitive facts about gifted students’ learning:

Gifted Students Learn Better When You Go Faster!

By better, research indicated significant retention improvement and by faster, the research says twice to three times as fast as a typical classroom pace.

Gifted students are significantly more likely to retain science and mathematics content accurately when taught 2-3 times faster than “normal” class pace.

I know my reaction to bored students’ faces is often negative. But perhaps they simply already got it. And isn’t that my goal?

As if this weren’t incredible enough, the inverse is true as well…

Gifted Students Learn Worse When You Go Slowly!

As counter-intuitive as it seems, extra review and practice causes forgotten or misunderstood material! Further, research indicates that more than three drills or repetitions can be excessive!

Gifted students are significantly more likely to forget or mislearn science and mathematics content when they must drill and review it more than 2-3 times

Allowing students to demonstrate mastery and then move on isn’t just a nice option to include occasionally. It is an essential part of teaching gifted students. Unnecessary repetition can actually harm students’ learning.

They Really Do “Just Get It!”

When your students stare blankly in response to the inevitable “but HOW do you know?” research shows that it is simply a result of their gifted thinking:

Gifted students are decontextualists in their processing, rather than constructivists; therefore it is difficult to reconstruct “how” they came to an answer.

Although it is frustrating when students simply “get it,” imagine their frustration when they are repeatedly told that understanding isn’t good enough.

Go With The Flow

Is it wrong to want students to work slowly and carefully, to practice thouroughly, and to understand how they arrived at an answer? Absolutely not. But it is vital to remain aware of the traits of gifted students and remember they are not simply “smart.” As their teachers, we must remain sensitive to their unique understandings and never work against their giftedness. Let’s stop this from happening:

Gifted adolescents consistently report dramatic episodes of being pushed to the point of doubt and despair by insensitive teachers…
Helping Adolescents Adjust to Giftedness
Buescher and Higham

3 Ways Teachers Battle Students’ Giftedness is a post from: Byrdseed Gifted

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1. Four Ways to Differentiate Objectives
2. 7 Ways To Use Film In The Gifted Classroom
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photo credit: yoppy

While gifted students look perfect on paper, their teachers know that in the classroom they are not all the academic angels and stellar scholars that people assume they are. Successful teachers of the gifted require a special understanding of their students’ social and emotional needs. Here’s a sampling of these needs and links to further reading and research.

1. Be aware that strengths and potential problems can be flip sides of the same coin.
   

   Strength: diverse interests and abilities; versatility Potential Problem: may appear disorganized or scattered; frustrated over lack of time… (read more)

2. Gifted students’ physical, emotional, social and intellectual growth is often uneven.
   

   Giftedness is asynchronous development in which advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm… (read more)

3. Gifted students may doubt that they are actually gifted (imposter syndrome).
   

   “Am I really that good?” crops up as a constant refrain. Some gifted kids deny their talents, burying them under a guise of “goof” or “know-it-all”; many of these kids have trouble with self-acceptance… (read more)

4. Gifted students face social challenges not just from peers, but parents and teachers as well.
   

   Teachers in secondary schools, in particular, have tried to disprove the talents of individual students, saying, in effect, “Prove to me you are as gifted as you think you are.” (read more)

5. As they get older, gifted students take fewer risks.
   

   Highly gifted children may tend to focus on what they can already do well because their only standard of acceptability is perfection. To some gifted children, a “B” is tantamount to failure, which limits your risk taking/making behavior to the ol’ stand bys: areas in which you have excelled in the past. (read more)

6. Gifted students can have suprisingly heightened emotionally sensitivity (pdf).
   

   One aspect of the “down side” of this sensitivity is a child’s
   feelings being easily hurt. This includes a low or no tolerance for perceived criticism
   from others. The operative word here is “perceived” since actual criticism is not
   necessary to upset a child who is highly sensitive… (read more – pdf)
   

7. Gifted students are often shy, know they’re shy, and know that shyness is often looked down upon.
   

   Americans believe that introversion, sensitivity, and childhood shyness are problems that need to be fixed…yet research on gifted children shows that the majority of them are introverted, and many are sensitive due to their heightened awareness of self and others… (read more)
   

8. Gifted students’ abstract intuition may conflict with teachers’ desire for concrete thinking.
   

   As teachers understand these differences between the insight-driven N students and their own preference for the concrete S activity, they can then begin to plan and implement the mode of instruction that will produce the highest results for each type’s learning preference… (read more)

9. Gifted students needs cannot be met by one style of learning.
   

   There is a common belief about the preference of gifted students for individual learning. Interestingly, in this study, both types are distributed almost equally in gifted adolescents. Therefore, it is likely that gifted students can benefit from both group projects and individual projects to a maximum extent provided that teachers have the flexibility to teach to different styles of thinking… (read more)

10. Gifted adults wish they were better informed about giftedness as children.
    

    My highly gifted adult subjects wrote about many of the changes they would make in their childhoods. They wanted more information and confirmation of their intellectual differences… (read more)

I’m interested to hear what needs you have run into when working with gifted students. Anything that you’d put on your list? Please share in the comments. kgsz362hdu

10 Social & Emotional Needs of the Gifted is a post from: Byrdseed Gifted

Related posts:

1. Google’s 20% In A Gifted Classroom
2. Ten Gifted Ed Resources – 7/23
3. Enticing Gifted Students To Read Twice