5 Ways to Meet Your Gifted Students' Needs

In busy classrooms, sometimes it can be easy to overlook the students who are doing well. After all, they can speak their language well, may not have behavioral struggles, and do not have an IEP or 504 plan. But sometimes, these students are doing well not because they don't need a teacher's help, but because they don't need the teacher's help in meeting the standard. In other words, they have already met the goals put forth by their teachers, and they are ready to learn more. But that does not mean they need another worksheet. Instead, their learning can and should be taken deeper, into higher-level ideas, research projects on niche parts of a unit, and student-led activities that will not only enrich the gifted students but help the others in the class as well. 

This article strives to answer the question How can we help our Gifted students learn more? with 5 easy-to use tips for any classroom. 

Utilize Student-Lead Activities

Many Gifted students thrive during lessons where they can take charge of their own learning. From research projects to diving into the arts, Gifted students often have their own natural abilities that they usually want to highlight. 

Some student lead activities might be easy, like a think pair share, where the students are given a question and can lead themselves through a conversation in an effort to answer that question. Some might need a bit more prep work, like a jigsaw activity wherein every group strives to teach the other groups about their topic. And some, like science experiments, in-class museums, and video creation, are in-depth and take time, effort, supplies, and sometimes extra money. But no matter what level of prep work you begin with, your Gifted kids will love the chance to lead the charge.

Ask Questions

Speaking of prep, this one is easy. All that's needed are questions. It might be good to script them ahead of time, especially if they are for a new lesson or grade. To get started, the Depth of Knowledge or DOK Levels can really help. The Depth of Knowledge levels are designed to help teachers determine how advanced a standard is, and they are super useful for differentiation. Each level refers to how well a student must understand a concept in order to perform an activity (Meador, 2020). 

When asking questions, make sure to align them to the DOK Level that the students are most closely aligned with. When creating and asking Gifted questions, align them with a level higher than the standard, with the assumption that the student has mastered the standard. If they have not, move back down to the standard-based questions. If they have, keep asking those higher-level questions!

Genius Hour

A Genius Hour is a great way to allow the students some time to work on things that they want to work on. Incorporated into a class's schedule, a Genius hour is a period of time wherein the students get the chance to engage in passion projects, do homework, read, or do other things that engage their minds and expand their learning. But a Genius Hour is not a study hall, and it is not a free-for-all. There must be guidelines in place, such as:

• Pick a Topic
• Develop a Question
• 
  Research
• Bring Everything Together
• Reflect

What those looks like will probably vary from classroom to classroom, and even student to student. For some, they may want to know how long it would take to play every single board game in the closet, and that could be an interesting and entertaining passion project. For others, though, they may need to finish their classwork or want to look into their research projects for other units.

Offer Choices

Offering choices is not just for Gifted students. This is a great method of differentiating for any group of students, regardless of where they come from or their needs. That is because offering choices encourages students to take ownership and responsibility for their learning, whilst also highlighting their particular interests and skills sets (Usher, 2019). Highlighting those interests and skills makes students feel connected to the work they are doing (Usher, 2019), and it helps foster an environment wherein everyone feels heard, wanted, and appreciated. 

Choices boards, technology, portfolios, and growth charts are all fun ways to offer students a choice in their learning (Usher, 2019). But beyond those, sometimes it can be as simple as asking, "How about we take a vote?" 

Let Your Students Breathe

Sometimes, as educators, it can be easy to become caught up in a student's potential success and bright future. When they are so brilliant, it can be easy and natural to shower them with all of praise and excitement, and even share with them your expectations for their future. But it's important to remember that Gifted and Talented does not mean emotionally ready to take on the world, and we have to give our students realistic, workable expectations that meet their needs, their level, and their situation. 

On that note. make sure to let your students--all of them--know that messing up is okay. They do not have to be perfect in every single moment and making mistakes does not undermine their brilliance. When working with Gifted students, this can include talking them off the proverbial ledge when their perceived pressure gets to be too much. But before it gets that far, it can also mean setting goals, and guiding your Gifted students through evaluating their own strengths, weaknesses, and desires to create engaging and realistic goals that can be achieved in a reasonable timeframe. 

Furthermore, it is important to keep the big dreams and fantasies for our students to ourselves--or at home--where those dream cannot suddenly morph into unachievable expectations that young minds are not ready to tackle yet. While we all want to see the best for our students, sometimes that means letting them be where they are, and not pushing them too far too fast.