I really enjoyed the article on "Gifted and Challenging," with Marcus. The article began by telling the reader how to recognize strengths and special talents and also noticing signs of struggle. This, I think, is the first step as a teacher to recognizing a student with disabilities in your classroom. The bulk of the article focused on telling educators how to respond to gifted students in their classrooms. When I was a senior is high school I assisted in a 4-8 yr. old special needs classroom and a lot of the suggestions and methods discussed I saw first hand in that school. I noticed that most of the students bad behavior was focused around them blaming themselves for not understanding the class material. After changing Marcus' learning environment we got to see some tools and methods MRs. Jenson used to successfully help MArcus. I have seen the daily schedule chart on a students desk used and it leads to a lot of success for each student. The students knows that once I finish Math, I will do writing, and once I finish writing I can read on the carpet, and so on. As the article states, "students like to know that there is a beginning and an end to each activity."
The best part of the article is the suggestions they made for educators as to how to stimulate gifted students learning. It is important as teachers to create a healthy learning environment for every child in your class. I feel like we have yet to learn how to work with these students to create that environment and this article focuses on that. Some of the suggestions were really helpful like use a variety of materials or allow time for the gifted child to explore their own interests. The 2nd article builds off of this and gives more resources and ideas for educators to use. I feel thus far in my teacher education I have not learned HOW to work with gifted children. I have only learned how to characterize and recognize gifted children but not what to do to accomodate these students. The articles were extremely helpful and interesting.
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-JESS AND TAYLOR (IN CLASS RESPONSE)
ReplyDeleteI am not sure if I would classify the desk charts/calendars as a academic support or a social support. Academically it helps to keep the kids on task and let them know what they still have to work on and socially it help motivate them to maintain good behavior so that they can get all smily faces next to each activity or subject. The calendars could actually function as a linguistic support too. The calendar has both pictures and words so students no matter what their reading level can make use of the charts.
Jess and I were happy to read an article that gave us information on how to work with gifted students. The charts were a terrific idea and could be used with many different students. The charts really seem like they would keep students focused and maintain good classroom behavior.