How Can You Challenge Gifted and Talented Students in Your Classroom?
How do I differentiate my teaching for gifted students? What is the best way to support gifted students in my class? Do I need to challenge my gifted students? If you have ever asked yourself a question like this, you’re in the right place! This post shares ideas that help you to effectively help gifted and talented students in your classroom. The daily challenge activities can be used for in-person and online learning.
Does it Really Matter?
Gifted children can easily get bored if their needs are not met. They become chronically under challenged and this leads to disengagement, underachievement and a lack of resilience (Burton, 2022). Over time, this may lead to mental health issues and / or self-harm (Burton, 2022). A Senate Inquiry in 2001 found that up to half of gifted students are underachieving in schools. Even more shockingly, it found that 20% of gifted students drop out before completing high school. We need to keep this in mind when teaching our gifted students and remember that it is a myth that they will be fine without support for their teacher just because they are smart. You can read more about the myths of gifted and talented students in this blog post.
What To Do
- Gifted and talented students need daily challenge in their specific areas of interest.
- Provide opportunities for student to work independently in their areas of interest and talent.
- Provide opportunities for gifted students to socialise and learn with like-minded / like ability peers.
- Differentiate pace. Often gifted students only need 1-3 repetitions to master a skill.
- Subject or year level acceleration.
(Rogers, K.B. Gifted Child Quarterly, 2007)
How to Provide Daily Challenge
There are lots of ways that you can give your gifted and talented students daily challenge in your classroom! Here are some ideas on how to challenge gifted students in math and reading:
- Use tasks that require higher order thinking skills
- Flip Blooms Taxonomy and focus analysing, evaluating and creating
- Games such as Sudoku, Wordle and Mather
- Explore podcasts
- Problem solving in mathematics
- Logic puzzles
- Rebus puzzles
- Visual spatial challenges
- Introduce them to philosophy and ethics
- Foster their unique interests through passion-based projects
- Engage them in academic based competitions in their area of interest such as Math Olympiads or debating
- Check out Mensa’s reading list challenge
Get a List of Resources Here
Download this FREE pdf list of teaching resources for gifted and talented students that you can use in your classroom!
