District Pull-Out Model
You may not be aware that there are many options for how content is delivered to gifted students. Of course you are familiar with our district pull-out model. As an upper grades elementary teacher your third, fourth, and fifth grade students receive one hour, two days each week of services from the AIG specialist. Some of the benefits of this program are that your gifted students have scheduled time to interact with students from other classes who think in different ways, but on similar levels. Socially, gifted students may feel more comfortable interacting with peers in this environment and also appreciate a change in pace from general classroom instruction because of the projects the AIG specialist is able to plan and implement.
On the other hand at times pull-out can be frustrating to you because there may be instruction that students miss that you know that they need while they are in the pull-out program. Also, as this is the only programming model in our district for AIG students, they are only served for a small portion of their time in school. This programming model does not recognize that students are gifted throughout the day in one or more content areas. The two hours each week your students receive of direct instruction from the AIG specialist is nowhere close to meeting all of the social, emotional, and academic needs your AIG students have. You can use acceleration and enrichment techniques in order to help supplement the pull-out program.
On the other hand at times pull-out can be frustrating to you because there may be instruction that students miss that you know that they need while they are in the pull-out program. Also, as this is the only programming model in our district for AIG students, they are only served for a small portion of their time in school. This programming model does not recognize that students are gifted throughout the day in one or more content areas. The two hours each week your students receive of direct instruction from the AIG specialist is nowhere close to meeting all of the social, emotional, and academic needs your AIG students have. You can use acceleration and enrichment techniques in order to help supplement the pull-out program.
Acceleration and Enrichment
Acceleration
There are two main forms of acceleration: grade acceleration and subject acceleration. Grade acceleration is when a student either begins kindergarten early or "skips" a grade. Although grade acceleration is something you can advocate for if you feel like your gifted student would benefit, this would not be part of your everyday practice as a teacher; however, you can employ subject acceleration on a regular basis.
Subject acceleration allows gifted students to reach more depth in a particular content area. You may have noticed that gifted students require less practice time than peers to achieve proficiency in understanding and applying processes. As a result, you can encourage your gifted students by decreasing the amount of less challenging work in order to provide an opportunity for more challenging tasks that capitalize and further develop students' initial understandings. For example, on a problem set that students are required to use a series of steps to solve 20 multiplication problems involving decimals you could require gifted students to solve only ten problems, but to also write reasonable real life situations that those numbers would be used and multiplied for those ten problems in addition to showing their work to achieve the product. Simple instances of differentiation such as the preceding are what gifted students need throughout the day in their gifted content area, not just during the time they spend in the pull-out program. Using information from formative assessments helps you know when it is appropriate to provide these instances of differentiation. Furthermore, the information that you gather about a student's prior knowledge of a topic with a pre-assessment can also be used to identify which areas of the topic students would benefit most from acceleration.
Enrichment
Another strategy you can employ is enrichment. Enrichment promotes creativity, complexity, and challenge in the content students are learning. Immediately, many of the enrichment opportunities that come to your mind are probably ones that take place outside of school hours such as the robotics and reading clubs. These are great opportunities that you can advocate for and recommend to your gifted students.
The sky is the limit when it comes to enrichment and you can also provide enrichment opportunities in your classroom for AIG students. What does this look like you ask? This could involve an independent study type of project (including some form of research) that addresses a particular interest that students have. The Bruner model is also ideal for enrichment because it encourages career exploration and a deep understanding of how the content and processes of disciplinary study are related. You could also enrich the assignment all students are working on to make it more complex for gifted students. For example, while some students work on comparing and contrasting the formation, appearance, and elevation of cloud types, gifted students could be identifying the relationships between particular cloud types and weather occurrences and using this information to make forecasts. All students are working on studying clouds, but the gifted students are applying the attributes of what they know about clouds.
There are two main forms of acceleration: grade acceleration and subject acceleration. Grade acceleration is when a student either begins kindergarten early or "skips" a grade. Although grade acceleration is something you can advocate for if you feel like your gifted student would benefit, this would not be part of your everyday practice as a teacher; however, you can employ subject acceleration on a regular basis.
Subject acceleration allows gifted students to reach more depth in a particular content area. You may have noticed that gifted students require less practice time than peers to achieve proficiency in understanding and applying processes. As a result, you can encourage your gifted students by decreasing the amount of less challenging work in order to provide an opportunity for more challenging tasks that capitalize and further develop students' initial understandings. For example, on a problem set that students are required to use a series of steps to solve 20 multiplication problems involving decimals you could require gifted students to solve only ten problems, but to also write reasonable real life situations that those numbers would be used and multiplied for those ten problems in addition to showing their work to achieve the product. Simple instances of differentiation such as the preceding are what gifted students need throughout the day in their gifted content area, not just during the time they spend in the pull-out program. Using information from formative assessments helps you know when it is appropriate to provide these instances of differentiation. Furthermore, the information that you gather about a student's prior knowledge of a topic with a pre-assessment can also be used to identify which areas of the topic students would benefit most from acceleration.
Enrichment
Another strategy you can employ is enrichment. Enrichment promotes creativity, complexity, and challenge in the content students are learning. Immediately, many of the enrichment opportunities that come to your mind are probably ones that take place outside of school hours such as the robotics and reading clubs. These are great opportunities that you can advocate for and recommend to your gifted students.
The sky is the limit when it comes to enrichment and you can also provide enrichment opportunities in your classroom for AIG students. What does this look like you ask? This could involve an independent study type of project (including some form of research) that addresses a particular interest that students have. The Bruner model is also ideal for enrichment because it encourages career exploration and a deep understanding of how the content and processes of disciplinary study are related. You could also enrich the assignment all students are working on to make it more complex for gifted students. For example, while some students work on comparing and contrasting the formation, appearance, and elevation of cloud types, gifted students could be identifying the relationships between particular cloud types and weather occurrences and using this information to make forecasts. All students are working on studying clouds, but the gifted students are applying the attributes of what they know about clouds.