And if a student does, maybe you should consider including her in the group.' No student is going to complain if they don't get the same assignments as the gifted kids. 'They know which kids are the smartest and which kids need help. 'It's not like kids don't know who's who in the classroom,' she explained. I didn't want the other kids to think I'm favoring them. Still, I worried about singling them out for special treatment in the regular classroom. They need challenging work, and they really appreciate being able to play off of one another.' 'But they're still kids, and they still need encouragement. 'You know, many people think that gifted kids can do it on their own,' she said. I expressed how much my daughter loved her class and told her that we felt lucky to live in a district that offered a special G&T program. During an open-house session, I visited my daughter's G&T class and talked briefly with her teacher about it. When my own child was selected for the gifted and talented program in our school district, she'd come home from school every day bubbling about the books they were reading, the projects they were doing, and the questions they were exploring. I couldn't provide differentiated instruction for everyone, so I subconsciously adopted the idea that my gifted kids were fine as long as they didn't receive direction that went further than the rest of the class. Given my students' wide range of abilities, I was used to teaching to the midline, while students with lower abilities received some extra attention individually. My school district didn't have a separate gifted and talented program, rather believing all classes should be heterogeneous. 'See me after class,' I'd say, so that I could talk about it further with them. I'll admit that when a gifted child asked a higher-level question after a lesson, I often put it off, thinking most students wouldn't be interested. When I created small groups, I followed a classic rule: one student with lower abilities, a few average students, and one gifted student to make sure the task was accomplished. To be honest, I'd say being gifted in my middle school English classroom often meant more responsibility. They weren't watering the plants, but the activities I'd assign them when they finished their work were the academic equivalent of tending to foliage-extra grammar packets or bonus spelling words, for example. 'How?' 'While the other students are working at their desks, they're the ones watering the plants and straightening up the room,' he said.Īs skeptical as I was, I started to consider the gifted and talented students in my own classroom. A veteran principal once told me he could identify the gifted and talented (G&T) students in a classroom within just a few minutes.

Gifted student