When I was the Youth & Education Ambassador for Mensa, I tried to run for an at-large board position at NAGC. I received a phone call from an NAGC employee telling me that they were not going to allow me to run because I was “not enough of an advocate
I wrote about how to NOT to tell a child he/she is gifted, and now I’m sharing my thoughts about how to do it well. Pick a time when you have time. There needs to be time for a real conversation, not a random comment tossed over a parent’s shoulder
I’m a big believer in gifted identification. Both I and my colleague Ian Byrd have written about it. Once a child is identified, you’re going to have to tell him/her. Like most things, there’s a right way to tell a child he/she is gifted, and a wrong way. In fact,
Interested in sketchnoting? Here’s how I learned and what you need to know.
It’s so helpful to see ideas from real, live teachers. I’m so excited to share these ideas with you for differentiating for the unique nature & needs of gifted students. The teacher I’m highlighting is Susan Day, a teacher at Fairview Middle School in Bremerton, Washington. I think we can
Even without the intensities/overexcitabilities so common in our gifted population, kids can be overly emotional. What do I mean by overly emotional? I mean that they: overreact to even mild stimuli; and/or base decisions on emotions rather than reason at a level inappropriate for their age; and/or engage in a
Not long ago I tweeted out a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt. Deciding to find the full text of the speech, I went hunting. I thought it was well worth sharing because it is so timely and so provocative. It’s also very difficult to find in full text, and I’m sharing
In my travels speaking with parents, facilitating with teachers, and working with gifted kids, I hear and see a lot of things. Some are truly great. I can’t believe the dedication I find, the heartwarming stories that are shared, and how much investment there is in our children. It’s awesome.
Most people have something they say they’d run back into a burning house for. For some, it’s photos or mementos. For others, it’s something of great monetary value. As a teacher, I have a few pedagogical tools I’d (figuratively) run into a burning house for, and the most precious is
The students are the core of what we do, and I think it’s critical that they are also able to be the corps, or body, of what we do. A gifted student wrote an essay for assignment at school, and she gave me permission to share her thoughts about being
In the article about creating a differentiated lesson plan step-by-step, I shared a lesson plan on landforms that used a cloud-based Jeopardy! game as a pre-assessment tool. I thought I would share a little more about how and why I do that. Jeopardylabs.com First, let me introduce you to Jeopardylabs.com.
I’m going to share a differentiated lesson plan from start to finish. In the article Begin with the Highest Level Learner in Mind I promised that I would share the process, and here it is. I decided to do a 5th grade lesson on landforms. To be more specific, I
