This site welcomes shared experiences. If you would like to contribute a short explanation of a technique you are currently using with gifted children please contact us. 

Vous aimeriez contribuer à l'édition de cette page en partageant avec nous des informations ou votre expérience, prière d'entrer en contact avec nous.

Lesson plans on the net.  The Univeristy of Alberta has a list of sources for lesson plans, great for teachers trying to support a particular interest of a gifted child.  Also wonderful for homeschool "helpers" looking for ideas.

New Performance Standards Manuals for Reading, Writing, Numeracy and Social Skills are available online (and in B.C. Schools)  from the B.C. Ministry of Education.  These manuals, downlowdable in Acrobat pdf format, or available from B.C. Office Products (see the website for details)  outline levels of expectations for various grades along with samples, and explanations of standards.  The manuals are intended to be used as a resource to support ongoing instruction and assessment, helping to support a criterion referenced approach to evaluation.  These manuals will become extremely important as the system moves away from formal testing measures for gifted students.  Check the Quick Reference lists to see what characterizes students who are working above expectations (or below expectations for those who are acting out for attentionor out of frustration with current classroom pacing)

Young Gifted Children    This is the downloadable pdf file (acrobat reader needed) a newsletter produced for distribution to Early Childhood Educators and Primary teachers by the Gifted Children's Association of B.C.

Gardner's Multiple Intelligences  Howard Gardner has had enough of watching children crawl around on the classroom floor in the name of his theory of multiple intelligences.....Debra Viadero interviewed him in Education week magazine to get Gardner's own views on how his theory is being applied. 

Dysgraphia try our new lined and gridded paper

Dysgraphia, or trouble with writing  (sometimes including spelling and punctuation) seems to be a problem for many highly gifted children (often for boys).  Students often complain their ideas come to fast for their printing or writing.  Without adaptations many students will be frustrated by their inability to express themselves through writing and may produce as little as possible. There are several good web sites which deal with the issues of dysgraphia. A good description of dysgraphia and information on techniques to help students is found at this "resource room" site.
 

Jim Cornish at Gander Academy in Gander Newfoundland created a set of theme pages out of concern for what students could access on the Internet using search engines. He found that with grade five students, they would often hit upon sites that were too difficult for them
to understand or contained inappropriate material, especially pornography. Jim found that even the most innocent of terms on many search engines produced lists of some of the worst materials on-line.

He also found that there were often too many hits and students would not have enough time to properly search through more than a few of them for research material. Using the theme pages narrowed the students' focus to what was best suited to support the work they were doing in class or in projects. Seemingly many others feel the same way. These pages receive up to several hundred hits daily.

Gander Academy has not placed any filtering software on their Internet access. They feel this approach provides a false sense of security and does not place any responsibility on the students for appropriate use of the Internet for their ages. So, they are promoting the idea that students make the choice not to make deliberate visits to these sites, knowing they are not suitable. They also use some of the monitoring features of their network to keep track of sites visited and resources downloaded. From this they can determine who is visiting these places.  Only one incident has occurred in three years and when they investigated, the student had brought the materials in from home. 

So, the pages serve several purposes:

1.      to provide students with lists of age appropriate material for research

2.      to provide students quick access to materials teacher's have determined
best suited to support curriculum objectives.

3.      to reduce the need to use search engines that can produce lists of
questionable hits.

Visit The Gander Academy research pages at http://www.stemnet.nf.ca/CITE/themes.html

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Ann Foster, a facilitator for the International Telementor Centre sent us the following:

Please take a few minutes to look at the telementoring site,(http://www.telementor.org/hp), and consider using the program in your school. You can see spotlight features from last year's program by clicking on the spotlight link at the bottom of the page and you can see projects
that were used last year by teachers in the program. The deadline for teacher applications is Dec. 12th for projects to begin in January. Each applicant that is accepted before Dec. 12th will receive the National Geographic Maps on CD-ROM. 

Our program has recently been featured in the NASSP Bulletin, Forbes, and Popular Science. Let me know if I can answer any questions for you. 

Thanks,
Ann Foster   nternational Telementor Center  Em-mail: annfoster@fmtc.net 
Voicemail:     (888) 453-0635 (toll free)
Fax:              (888) 453-0635 (toll free

She also sent the following description of the project which is sponsored by a number of companies identified at the website

I am a teacher in South Carolina, USA and an education facilitator for the International Telementor Center. Are you interested in bringing the business community into your classrooms to work individually with your students? Do you ever need another resource to help you  encourage hard to reach / at risk students? Telementoring can be the answer for you.  As a teacher this is one of the best resources that I have ever seen.  Many teachers have asked me to let more teachers and educators know about the program. 

Through telementoring, I have watched children who were failing at school become the most self-confident, A-B students in the school. This program allows HP professionals and other companies worldwide to help students, through teacher-supervised projects, in the critical areas of  math, science, professional communication skills and career/education planning.
In addition, HP employees or other business employees help students develop the skills they need to pursue interests in a professional and successful way. 

In general, we are looking for teachers who use e-mail and the Web on a daily basis, are able to secure individual e-mail accounts for their students, understand how to integrate technology into the classroom, and are willing to develop, implement, monitor and evaluate the work the students are doing with the mentors. This is a project based program that should be fully integrated into the teacher's curriculum. It should not be viewed as an extracurricular 
activity. The project that the students work on must be graded by the teacher and be included in their final grade.

As educators look at School-to-Work initiatives and set new standards in the areas of math and science, it would seem that bringing the business community into the classroom would be a perfect solution. The following research points out the impact mentoring can have:

"Young people with mentors are 46% less likely to begin using illegal drugs, 27% less likely to begin using alcohol, 53% less likely to skip school, 37% less likely to skip a class, 33% less likely to hit someone."
SOURCE: Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America 1995 Impact Study

"Students say their mentors helped raise their goals and expectations (73%) and report improved grades (59%)."
SOURCE: 1989 Louis Harris Poll

"Young people with mentors are more likely to stay in school, attend classes, achieve and aspire to better grades, and go to college."
SOURCE: 1988 Proctor & Gamble

For questions, concerns and/or comments, e-mail help@telementor.org

 From Alberta:Teaching Students who are Gifted and Talented is the seventh book in the Programming for Students with Special Needs series from the Alberta Education resource development unit.  Teaching Students who are Gifted and Talented is approximately 350 pages in length and sold in a binder format through the Learning Resources Distribution  in Alberta. The intent of the resource is to build a better understanding of giftedness and provide a range of practical classroom strategies.

Section 1 Administration of Programs for Students who are Gifted and Talented outlines a planning process to assist school boards and schools in developing programs for students who are gifted. 
Section 2 Conceptions of Giftedness includes an overview of the theory that has influenced the field of gifted education (in plain language!). This theory is organized into eight conceptual models. Each model includes an overview of the theory and identifies the assessment procedures and programming options. 
Section 3 Identification includes information about the characteristics of giftedness and describes a variety of methods for gathering data. 
Section 4  an overview of giftedness in the visual and performing arts.
Section 5 Strategies for Designing and Implementing Instruction includes over 75 pages of strategies to assist teachers in modifying programs to meet the needs of students who are gifted. The resource includes suggestions for developing Individualized Program Plans (IPPs) and includes completed samples. The IPP Profile and IPP Student Plan are two examples of tools that have been included to assist teachers in developing IPPs. 

There are 61 appendices that include a variety of checklists and other planning tools to complement the information in the text.  The resource also includes an annotated test inventory and a list of recommended resources. 

For more information about Teaching Students Who Are Gifted and Talented please contact  Greg Bishop, Coordinator, Resource Development Unit, Special Education Branch (780) 422–6326;
toll-free in Alberta by dialing 310-0000.

The B.C.Ministry of Education has several web resources for teachers of gifted students. 
 Online manuals concerning policy, IEP's and a Gifted Resource Guide for Teachers can be accessed through their special needs pages 

The Nova Scotia Ministry of Education has a new gifted education document online  Challenge for Excellence  
 
 
 
 

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