Thinking Ahead

At your age.... or the whole is more than the sum of the parts

2012-02-02T08:00:00.000+08:00

I recently caught up with a school friend for the first time in many, many years.Seven months ago as she was training to compete in a national level event she wasknocked from her bicycle by a car. She is fortunate to be recovering from her injuries but theprocess of rehabilitation will continue for quite some time yet. One thingwhich she has found particularly frustrating is the attitude that she should besatisfied with gains she has made. Apparently the phrase 'at your age' has passedthe lips of a number of her specialists.

It struck me that it is much the same in education. Expectations areoften based on age, regardless of potential or possible capabilities. My friendwas an athlete in peak condition, highly attuned to her body and she is well aware ofwhat her body was capable of and her limits. Many gifted children are not insuch a fortunate position, never discovering their limits as a result of beingconstrained by what would be expected 'at their age'.

Another frustration my friend faces is the fact that she was is considered as a 'whole' but rather as separate parts particularly when she was first injured. Each body part was treated in isolation, the knee person onlylooking at her knee without anyone appearing to consider how that might impact on her also injured hip and so on. Whilethese specialists undoubtedly have specialist knowledge the fact that there isno overview or plan that considers her in an integrated way restricts herprogress.

Many students are frustrated by the compartmentalized nature of curriculum subjectareas, and gifted students in particular often need the big picture in order tomake sense of things learned in isolation. In much the same way as there is a need to treat the body as a whole, planning for the academicneeds of gifted students without also planning for their social or emotionalneeds is likely to limit the effectiveness of theintervention.

photo Stuart Miles

How do you tame a lion?

2012-01-23T15:34:00.000+08:00

And what has that to do with education?

Both literally and figuratively, ‘taming alion’ means approaching something intimidating and powerful and by the use ofstrategy and your wits, disarming the beast.Advocating for your gifted child can feel a little like ‘taming a lion’, atleast initially. Parents often feel some degree of intimidation stepping acrossthe threshold into the school to discuss their child. But with strategy and a degree of intuition, you can 'tame' the situation and bring about a positive outcome.

Just as with a real lion, building trust is a critical element in the‘taming’. The most important thing a parent can do is to establish a positiverelationship with the teacher of their child. If a child is gifted, this canbecome even more important. You can build this trust by introducing yourselfand then being visible over time. Teachers will be more receptive to parentsthey are familiar with, when they know what to expect. If you can’t be there face to face, keep in contact withyour child’s teacher. Give them feedback when things are going well, tell themabout the positives.

If you can, help out in the classroom. Ithas the added advantage of letting your observe your child in the classroom andthe dynamics in action. Consider volunteering to help with reading or otheractivities, helping the teacher with ‘non-teaching’ tasks like displayingstudent work, collating materials or even doing errands. You might considervolunteering to go along on an excursion or camps or be involved in preparingfor performances.

Just as taming a lion doesn’t happen overnight, your (positive) relationship with the teacher will develop over time. But it can make a huge difference. No-one wants to get their head bitten off, neither the teacher nor the parent!

One parent summed it up neatly with her comment:

You can’t expect the school to go out oftheir way for you without giving them something back. The relationship has tobe two way.”

You will find more Tips for Talking toTeachers in Derrin's forthcoming book Gifted and Thriving at school: How Proactive parents can get theeducation that fits their child, which will be available at the end of February.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A Time for Reflection and Thinking Ahead

2011-12-31T21:18:00.000+08:00

It is easy to get caught up in the details.The realities of day to day life, especially with gifted children is that thelittle things tend to be the most obvious – the overwhelm of trying to answerthe endless questions of a 4 year old, get a reluctant child out the door toschool, or perhaps managing the frustration or meltdowns of a child who isfinding little challenge at school.

The end of the year is typically a time forreflection and an opportunity to look at the bigger picture. It makes an idealtime to take stock of progress as well as current challenges. Both can help usin considering our next steps.

Stepping back to look at the big picturecan help us notice those things that we might have missed along the way, inmuch the same way that we don’t notice our children growing because it happenslittle by little and then suddenly they seem to have shot up.

Then we can begin the process of workingout where we would like to be this time next year. Resolutions might be theflavour of the moment, but deciding on a goalcan often be more valuable in helping you stay on track and can help guidedecisions that you need to make, particularly with regard to your child’seducation.

I hope you will have a moment in the next few days to reflect onhow things have gone and to celebrate how amazing life is with gifted children,even if it is also exhausting, and at times more challenging that we would wish.All the best for the coming year, and I hope that it brings many wonderfulmoments to you all.

How being gifted is like being left handed

2011-12-06T15:08:00.001+08:00

Giftedness is a characteristic of the child in the same way that a child might be left handed.

Giftedness is not immediately visible. It requires observing thechild in action. Similarly you can't tell by looking at someone whether they are left handed, it is only evident from their actions and interactions with the world.

Giftedness occurs in a relatively small slice of the population. Lefthandedness occurs in roughly similar frequency.

There are varying degrees of giftedness, just as there are varyingdegrees of handedness.

You don’t grow out of being gifted any more than you grow out of being lefthanded.

I am sure the analogy can be extended even further. Any more ways that come to mind?

Stealing from the Future or The Dangers of Coasting

2011-11-25T09:00:00.000+08:00

It sounds like the ideal in some ways, nothaving to put in too much effort to get results, but it can quietly steal fromthe future.

Coasting along not having to put in mucheffort to achieve the desired results is likely to mean never learning healthywork or study skills. It provides very little opportunity to practicepersistence, a quality that is considered to be one of the most important insuccess in life. It is also likely to result in little real learning. At worstit can have an impact on health, both physically and mentally and thedysfunction can become engrained in the personality, with an expectation thateverything will come easily and an unwillingness to put in any effort.

Even a child who is working at a level wellahead of their age mates can stop learning if the learning environment doesn’tmeet their needs. Letting the child coast, languishing in an environment wherethe curriculum is at a level lower than their learning level or progressing ata pace too slow for that particular child, even for part of a year, can haveconsequences. Self esteem can plummet, love of learning can disappear, andknowledge and achievement levels can actually go backwards. Depending on thepersonality of the child, willingness to cooperate or to be patient waiting forothers to catch up can also take a dive.

Studies conducted in the northernhemisphere with their long summer break provide some insight into what happenswhen children are not actively learning. For some children (particularly thosewithout enriched environments out of school) significant regression inachievement levels have been shown after the summer break. Anecdotal commentsfrom teachers in

Australia

also suggest that even our shorter summer break has a similar effect. (Perhapsthis is why schools use tests for the year just completed at the start of thenew school year to find out what the kids know instead of using the end of yeartests for the current year level, which would at least provide insight intowhat the students don’t know, or need to learn that year. It would be an effective pre-test but that is a post for another time).

At the Asia Pacific Federation forGiftedness conference in Singaporein 2008 James Stronge from the College of William and Mary presentedsome interesting research on teacher quality and effectiveness. He outlined theway the gains from an effective teacher can still be evident 3 – 5 years later.Similarly the negative impacts of an ineffective teacher can also last 3 – 5years. While our children may be able to largely recover from one ‘bad’ year(equating to a year in which they learned little), two back to back hassignificant long term impacts on learning trajectory. Lost learning time islost, but it is the impact on motivation which is perhaps more cumulative.

The results of coasting along, theexpectation that learning is easy and the lack of opportunity to develop theskills of how to learn often catch up with gifted students in the high schoolyears where they are faced with an increase in new content and expectations.For some the safe choice is to avoid challenge, further compounding theproblems of coasting and the impact on self esteem. It is often at this pointthat less able students who have experienced a better match between their needsand the curriculum offered and who developed ‘academic resilience’ as a result,out perform gifted ‘coasters’.

Gifted students need achievable challenge togrow as learners, to reach into their gifted potentials and develop skills suchas flexibility, perseverance, interest, and inventiveness.

Parents are in an ideal position to monitor their child’s enthusiasm forlearning. Many parents have told me of their concern that the sparkle in theirchild’s eyes, or their flame for learning being the catalyst to finding out moreabout their child’s needs. Remembering that many children show the teacher whatthey perceive he or she wants to see, the teacher may be oblivious to thechanges that you can see as a parent. While being involved in your child’seducational path might not be what you had planned, as a parent of a giftedchild it can pay dividends.

Coasting vs Consolidation
Coasting is different to consolidation.This is where after a period of learning, mastering new challenges, the childsteps back for a time while this new learning is assimilated with what theyalready know. When a gifted child is working at an appropriate level, they willprobably need to spend about 10% of their time consolidating. Coasting tends tobe long term, a bit like taking a stroll instead of jogging.

If it ain't working.............

2011-11-14T09:30:00.000+08:00

The first step in changing the system is to stop doing the things we know will fail

While this statement was not written specifically about schools it could apply just as easily to our children's education. The old saying "If it ain't broke then don’t fix it" could perhaps be reworded to say …….. if it ain't working,then fix it.

Teachers might be inspired to try a new approach with a student whodoesn't seem to be making progress instead of continuing to do something whichhasn't worked to date. After all it doesn't make sense to think that that more of the same will bring abouta different outcome if it didn't work the first time....

Schools might be inclined to consider the role of testing inidentifying deep learning (as distinct from shallow thinking and lower orderskills), or even in choosing who is in and who is out of special programs whenthey read some of what neuroscience is discovering about learning, especially whenit is considered in light of the world our children will enter when they arefinished with school learning.

Parents might also gain confidence in their own judgement. If yourchild's school experience isn't positive in terms of their learning, or perhapstheir mental health, then something needs to change. And you can be an agent ofchange.

Parents often believe that their child must to go to school regardless.While the is a legal requirement to attend school from the year the childturns 6 1/2, there are options if the current situation isn't healthy.Homeschooling can provide a much closer match between a child's needs and their learning and there are a raft of optionsavailable for parents. A 'holiday' or travel experience can also provide thespace to work out what might work better. Or the occasional 'mental health' dayto reduce stress levels (of both child and parent) can make the world ofdifference if other options aren't immediately achievable.

You know your child better than anyone else, you live with them whentimes are good and also when things are not going well and know that the impactis greater than just on the child. If things are not working, then gather theinformation you can, look at options and work out how you can avoid being partof something that you know is failing.

Learning - is it a skill, or will??

2011-11-11T09:30:00.000+08:00

I wrote in the last blog post about the role attention plays in ourstudents success, or at least how narrowly we have focussed on scores and howthat might be impacting on their success. It seems that quite a few people arethinking about related issues. I came across some comments in Steve Miranda's blog recently that build on the idea that success in life isdependent on more that just academic success. Perhaps we could extend that ideato include the thought that it takes more than just being gifted to succeed.

Steve's comment:

The students who persisted incollege were not necessarily the ones who had excelled academically..... theywere the ones with exceptional character strengths, like optimism, persistenceand social intelligence.

Daniel Pink in his book Drive also emphasized the importance of passionand persistence over talent. And I have just started another book called Bounce (by Matthew Syed) which (so far) seems to propose that talent is more a matter of opportunitythan innate ability.

It is important to help kids develop strong character and nurture theirnatural intrinsic motivation to learn. Then they are not only more likely todevelop personal traits needed to be successful but also gather a great deal ofacademic learning along the way as a result.

What gets your attention?

2011-11-08T09:30:00.000+08:00

What was the most formative experience of your school life?

Was it a result on a test?

Or was it something you experienced with a teacher (good or bad)?

Our school system places a lot of faith in testing and scores as a measureof learning success, but does all thetesting and measuring capture the essence of education? Chances are that theanswer most of you gave to the question I asked earlier was thatnit was an experiencewith a particular teacher, or even a particular lesson. A result on a exam ortest doesn't seem to capture the essence of education in quite the same way.You have to wonder then whether school in its presesnt form is 'working', whetherit really prepares our children for a future that we can't even imagine. Does atest score build passion, creativity, problem solving ability, team work, tenacityor any of the other skills which are being discovered to play an important part in success, not justat a school but also in life-after-school, that much larger slice of life?

I have been reading a fascinating book called 'Now You See It' (by CathyDavidson ) which looks at the science of attention. In it she argues that the narrownessof focus that both our school system and culture value is contributing to thedecline in scores that is of concern to educators. Our gifted children are notexempt, although lack of engagement may play an additional role in theirapparent failure to perform to their potential in many cases. Our school systemis well designed to prepare students for the sort of working life that theywere likely to experience in the past but many of those jobs no longer exist asreadily as they did. Our children tend to be effective learners in theinterconnected world of technology but most are without the opportunity tocontinue to build or refine these skills in their school based learning. Thosewhose skills do not lie in the subjects or methods taught in staught are likelyto grow up believing they are 'not good at learning', despite many having greatstrengths in learnig via techology.

The things which command our attention and inspire us might hold the cluesto developing an education that will engage and inspire our children to learnand believe they have the skills to cope in a rapidly changing world. Tappinginto the new way of learning that they are pioneering and continually evolvingwill also make a difference.

If you are interested to read about some innovations in learning,including a school where learning opprtunities are designed based on gamingprinciples, have a dip into Now You See It. And if you fancy some furtherreading to understand the changing world look for a copy of Dan Pink's book A Whole New Mind and also Guy Claxton's book called What's the Point of School . They are sure to leave you thinking.

School and the Real World

2011-10-26T22:41:00.001+08:00

My apologies, things have been a bit quiet on the blog front lately, partly due to an extended overseas break, but I have been gathering ideas in my notebook from things I have been reading, and what comes to mind as a result. This thought started somewhere else but it raised some interesting questions about just what is 'real'.........

When I speak to groups of teachers, or even parents, on the topic of grouping inevitably someone comments in favour of mixed ability groups, claiming that grouping gifted kids together in groups or classes isn't needed because it doesn't reflect the 'real world'.

Equally when talking about the need to tap and develop students' passions in order to keep them engaged, learning meaningfully and on the path to success in life, someone inveitably comments that it is all very well but in the 'real world' you don't get to delve into what ever you like. This is usually said with some degree of envy, most people still feel that work is something you have to do, not enjoy.

The reality is that in the so called 'real world' (that is, the world after our school years are completed) we don't limit ourselves to friends of the same age. We mix with and enjoy the company of people with similar interests to us, regardless of their age. Nor is it likely that we will be in a work situation that includes people from such a wide range of intellectual abilities as a mixed ability classroom (particularly by the end of Primary school or beyond). We tend to work amongst others of a fairly similar intellectual level as ourselves on the whole.

For our children who are at school, that is their real world, perhaps the only one they have had the opportunity experience as yet.

So which is the real, 'real world'?

The value of failing

2011-09-08T20:00:00.000+08:00

It is tempting as parents to scaffold sotightly that our children never experience failure, that they never learn howto pick themselves up when things don’t go well and discover that the worlddoesn’t end, no matter how uncomfortable the might feel. Being able to persistin the face of challenge is a crucial element of grit or perseverance, a reallyimportant factor in becoming successful.

Learning what doesn’t work helps buildresilience. Not knowing can also help build independence, self reliance and theability to problem solve. Ultimately this can reinforce the belief that we can controlour destiny to a degree rather than being a victim of circumstances. Monitoringtoo closely can interfere with our children learning these valuable skills. Asmuch as we would like to see them do well, they need to learn how to do thatindependently, to learn that their actions (or inaction) have a consequence,whether it is forgetting their lunch, not completing homework, or preparinginsufficiently for a test. The important thing for parents to do is not to stopthem falling, but to provide a safe environment in which they can do so andhelp them learn from the experience.

It turns out that error-free learning is inefficient.Learning becomes stronger and more long lasting if conditions are arranged sothat we make errors. It sounds contradictory but it has been shown that weremember things better and longer if we are given really challenging tests before we learn the material. It appearsthat an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve information before we are given orfind an answer helps us remember information better than simply studying theinformation. Trying and failing to retrieve an answer actually helps learning.

Pre-testing, or giving a test before content is taught, then studyingor learning just the bits you missed will improve learning. In some ways thismakes sense, spending time covering material you already know isn’t likely tomove your learning forward. But perhaps more important is becoming comfortablewith not knowing. Students who find school easy, who get high marks withouteffort are missing the chance for deep and long term learning.

The role of frustration in learning

2011-09-02T13:56:00.000+08:00

When we learn something new, progress is rarely seen in a smooth and steady line. It happens in bursts. At first progress seems to be slow, then we break through to the next level where we might sit for a while consolidating our skills before we move on again to the next stage.

Schools on the other hand are set up for steady progress. Despite the fact we know that the brain develops in bursts of activity followed by consolidation, and this is what we observe in learning ourselves, there is pressure to show continual learning.

It is frustrating to reach a certain level of expertise and then feel ‘stuck’ and feel that no matter how hard we work, we cant get past that stage to the next. It doesn’t matter whether it is learning a piece of music, playing a computer game or learning a physical skill like water skiing. But think about how often have you felt frustrated when you couldn’t break through to the next level of something and you left it alone for a while. When you came back to work on it again, it seemed much easier to make the progress that had been alluding you previously. It was as if you had been working on it in the back of your mind while you were doing something else.

It just might be that the frustration actually serves a purpose in learning. Perhaps frustration is designed to get us to leave something we have been working hard on, so that we can continue the work subconsciously and refresh our energy by changing to a different activity. Perhaps it is the brain’s way of being efficient.

If we jump in when our kids are frustrated and help them out or do it for them, we might just be taking away a valuable moment of learning. Sometimes kids are really annoyed when an adult jumps in to ‘fix’ something for them, perhaps with good reason! We might not be doing them a favour after all when we helped them out.

Perhaps one reason we jump in is to avert the risk of the child feeling like a ‘failure’ for not being able to do something themselves. Certainly with regard to school work, we worry that if a child cannot do something they might feel badly, but perhaps the feeling of ‘failure’ is a result of us telling them (or showing them by jumping in too soon) that we don’t believe they can do it.

The frustration of not being able to do something doesn’t stop a young child from persisting with learning to control their body and become independently mobile. And persistence is rarely a problem when they are trying to complete self directed tasks, perhaps moving on to the next level of a computer game. Maybe the differences is that no-one is telling them they cant do it and they are following the natural learning process.

Surviving and Thriving at Work Home and School

2011-08-31T08:33:00.000+08:00

Thriving is a little more complicated than surviving isn't it? Knowing what makes the difference so you can get the best results via the shortest route can really make a difference especially when life is busy and the demands of a household with the added intensity of giftedness is added on top.

While I was sorting out my books for the Book Sale recently I found one I had forgotten about. It is a great book with lots of information about making the most of what we have got, called Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work School and Home by John Medina.

His short list of the 12 Rules he believes we all should know are

EXERCISE Rule #1 – Exercise boosts brain power

SURVIVAL Rule #2 – The human brain evolved, too.

WIRING Rule #3 – Every brain is wired differently

ATTENTION Rule #4 – We don’t pay attention to boring things

SHORT TERM MEMORY Rule #5 – Repeat to remember

LONG TERM MEMORY Rule #6 – Remember to repeat

SLEEP Rule #7 – sleep well, think well

STRESS Rule #8 – Stressed brains don’t learn the same way

SENSORY INTEGRATION Rule #9 - Stimulate more of the senses

VISION Rule #10 – Vision trumps all other senses

GENDER Rule #11 – Male and female brains are different

EXPLORATION Rule #12 - We are powerful and natural explorers

A nice easy list to remember, perhaps not so easy to put all of them into practice at once, but it is worth aiming for. Helping our kids to remember them too might mean more thriving rather than simply surviving for them too.

(If you are interested in reading more, this book will be available in round 2 of the book sale next week. It is a hard cover book and comes with a DVD)

The dangers of speed

2011-08-09T13:46:00.002+08:00

I came across a warning about the dangers of mistaking speed for efficiency in an article in a business newsletter (Is speed killing our communication skills?) but in many ways it applies equally well as a warning about education. Perhaps business is just catching up with what education has been doing for ages.

The immediacy with which we can now communicate has placed an increasing focus on speed, for better or worse. Why do we think fast is better? Have we mistaken speed for understanding (and in the case of business for efficiency)? Is it better to have an answer however shallow rather than to think.

The concern about the effect the Internet with its ready answer to any question has on our ability to think is gathering speed, but perhaps the problem is not so much the ready access to answers but the fact that we value ready answers over thought out ones.

Is speed at mental computation an adequate indicator of maths ability? While it is a part of a balanced program and it is important to know basic facts readily, asking students to demonstrate the skill in an arbitrary time limit (I wonder has anyone measured whether 2 minutes is the best time, or whether 5 or 7 be more appropriate) might actually hinder some children’s learning, establishing a belief that they aren’t good at maths, influencing their effort and enthusiasm in future. Some students respond well to competition and timed situations and thrive on the pressure to bring out their best. Others have a different reaction. The focus on timed tests as a standard measure of how much a child knows also clearly spells out to children that ‘faster is smarter’. Our ‘smartest’ students by this measure are the best test takers, not necessarily the brightest students.

‘Thinking Time’ is a rare thing in a classroom, despite its proven value in getting beyond superficial thinking or narrow answers. A teacher posing an open question but insisting that no-one answers for 30 seconds would be an unfamiliar experience for most kids.

Divergence is not highly valued, it is more convenient (and therefore faster or more efficient) for everyone to behave the same way or produce the same product.

Our reflective kids who need to consider things from many angles before feeling ready to contribute often feel they don’t have time to answer or contribute to discussions, teacher often comment that these kids appear to be ‘somewhere else’ or a little bit behind the conversation, with the implied message that they aren’t that clever (or not fast enough to be clever)

Our divergent kids often have off the wall ideas to contribute but many quickly learn that these are less welcomed than the expected answer, which allows the teacher to continue on the planned path of a lesson. They may come into their own if there is a brainstorming opportunity, but often these are also cut short at the point where the initial ideas dry up, rather than waiting for the deeper more considered ideas to have time to come to the fore.

The need for children to develop thinking skills, to be innovative or demonstrate creativity is clear when employers are spending time and money re-igniting these skills in adults. They need not be add-ons to the regular curriculum, if we shift the emphasis away from speed and begin to appreciate depth of understanding as a measure of learning.

How challenge can reduce stress

2011-08-05T13:35:00.003+08:00

A while ago I worked with a family with a young girl who had completely turned off learning at school (at home it was a different story although she was selective in her interests and increasingly preferred to know she would succeed even at home). Her teachers were concerned about her anxiety levels and the way she was (not) coping with year level content.

After a thorough investigation looking at potential, achievement levels and other background information the family arranged for their daughter to be accelerated to the next year level. The change of expectations, finding the bar had been raised (along with an expectation that she could manage the work at that level) and being offered more meaningful challenge led to higher achievement levels as we expected but also to her parents noticing that her stress levels reduced and that she was coping better, even at the times when things were not still challenging enough. Had the focus simply been on the emotional state of the child without an appreciation of what might be happening at a chemical level in her brain, the opportunity she needed to turn things around might have been denied.

Making decisions about what is best for a child does need to include the whole child, but it also needs to consider the whole picture. Focussing on one aspect without consideration of it’s place in the whole is a bit like putting a band aid on a blister but not removing the stone from your shoe.

Boredom turns the brain off

2011-07-30T13:28:00.000+08:00

Or the importance of meaningful and achievable challenge

Lets think about skiing as an example, seeing as it is winter. If you already know how to ski, this analogy will probably be more meaningful, if not, you can substitute any other sport or skill you know better. Imagine you are being able to ski at a fairly expert level having put in practice elsewhere, but you find yourself having to spend the day on the easy slopes. It is unlikely that your skills will continue to improve in this setting and you will probably begin feeling frustrated and somewhat bored. You will probably have trouble keeping your mind on what you are doing and probably not ski as well as you could. Quite possibly, before long, you will lose interest in skiing. Unless you feel the achievement is a challenge, there is no intrinsic satisfaction from your success or progress.

This is a similar situation to one gifted kids find themselves in when there is insufficient challenge in the classroom. It is difficult to remain motivated without appropriate challenge.

We only experience the rewards of our competence and effort, or perseverance, when the achievement is authentic. That means that doing something easy, perhaps getting full marks on a task which required a skill we learned ages ago (think adding single digit numbers perhaps) doesn’t have the same effect as something challenging and new that we have to work at.

Meaningful challenge is a powerful motivator.

In fact, it appears that the impact happens at a chemical level in our brains. Our brain is a pleasure focussed so that once it has experienced the rush of dopamine that comes with success at an authentic task it seeks out opportunities to repeat the feelings of satisfaction and pleasure. Meaningful challenge helps build confidence and curiosity and even perseverance. Gifted students need achievable challenges (just as all children do) in order to grow as learners and to develop their potential. The tasks however, need to be appropriate to their learning needs.

What happens in our brains when we are bored? Our reptile brain kicks in. The amygdala actually blocks learning when students are bored. It goes into a stress reactive state when learning activities are not at the appropriate level. The only options open to it are Fight, Flight or Freeze. In the classroom this can show up as lack of participation in activities, disruptive behaviour, zoning out or raised anxiety levels.

If that rings any bells in the way your child is responding at school, try to engage them in a conversation about school, what they enjoy, if there are any subjects where they spend time waiting, or are not engaged. While these behaviours could be attributed to other things, probing can help you gauge whether boredom or lack of appropriate challenge might be contributing.

It is also important to talk to the teacher, find out what they are seeing. While you are working on a plan with the teachers, be on the lookout for opportunities to help your child go into more depth in areas they find least stimulating at school. Look for books or interactive websites (Gifted Children: Resources for Parents andTeachers in WA has plenty to use as starting points).

A match between the curriculum and the child’s learning needs will be important in bringing about changes in brain chemistry and turning around lack of engagement, disruptive or anxious behaviours. As adults we find it very difficult to feign ongoing interest in or motivation for something that does not provide us with a meaningful challenge. Our children are no different.

Preparing for the Future

2011-06-11T07:26:00.004+08:00

I am currently in the USA at the Future Problem Solving International competition.

Dr Peter Bishop Director of the Graduate Program in Future Studies at the University of Houston spoke at the opening of the Future Problem Solving International Competition in La Crosse Wisconsin last night (local time) and made some thought provoking comments. In front of the 2400 young people who had qualified to represent their state or country, and their coaches (and some parents), he proposed that EVERY child should be studying the future. The young people who have embraced FPS are fortunate in that they have a chance to consider issues and solutions to problems their world may face and to be able to potentially influence the future, not only their own. But we know this is not the case for every child.

Dr Bishop recounted how throughout his study towards a series of degrees in various fields, his teachers never mentioned the future, which he pointed out was perhaps is not surprising considering that their teachers never mentioned it to them.

If you ask teachers, they will tell you their role is to prepare students for the future, yet at school we study the past (history) but it is rare to consider studying the future. History is without a doubt important, but the pace of change is accelerating and it is becoming increasingly difficult to adequately apply lessons from the past to the future. Now more than at any other time in the past is it important to be forward looking.

We know that the fate of the world will be in the hands of our young people.We know that every child will live their lives in the future (as we will). It seems important that they develop the skills of critical and creative thinking, of evaluating ideas and working with others across disciplines as they prepare for a future we can not even imagine. Dr Bishop proposed that teaching about the future should be part of the regular curriculum in every classroom and school. If the array of possible outcomes imagined by groups of students who completed the Global Issues booklets today is anything to go by, our future can only be better for wide exposure to future based thinking.

If you would like to hear more of Dr Peter Bishop's ideas, there are several You Tube presentations which may be of interest. (sorry, I don't seem to be able to post links from my iPad but if you search Dr Peter Bishop futurist there is part 1 and Part 2 of a presentation worth watching. Links will hopefully be in the next newsletter, or maybe on Facebook)

A Fable

2011-05-28T18:40:00.000+08:00

I came across this quote recently and it reminded me of this Fable about an animal school.

One time the animals had a school. The curriculum consisted of running, climbing, flying and swimming, and all the animals took all the subjects.

The duck was good in swimming, better than his instructor, and he made passing grades in flying, but was practically hopeless in running. He was made to stay after school and drop his swimming class in order to practice running. He kept this up until he was only average in swimming. But, average is acceptable, so nobody worried about that but the duck.

The eagle was considered a problem pupil and was disciplined severely. He beat all the others to the top of the tree in the climbing class, but he had used his own way of getting there.

The rabbit started out at the top of his class in running, but had a nervous breakdown and had to drop out of school on account of so much make-up work in swimming.

The squirrel led the climbing class, but his flying teacher made him start his flying lessons from the ground instead of the top of the tree, and he developed charley horses from overexertion at the take off and began getting C's in climbing and D's in running.

The practical prairie dogs apprenticed their off-springs to a badger when the school authorities refused to add digging to the curriculum.

At the end of the year, an eel that could swim well, run, climb, and fly a little was made valedictorian.

This Fable appeared in The Instructor in April 1968, I downloaded a copy some years ago but you can still find it online here

Storytelling

2011-05-24T11:14:00.000+08:00

Why must studying history involve remembering a procession of dates, they are numbers and they all look the same and is it really important to remember that something happened on a certain date rather than what it happened before and after?

My daughter posted this comment on Facebook recently as she was studying for a history ‘interrogation’ on European History, in Italian. In the typical fashion of a visual learner, history as a subject at school is not her strong suit, she loves the stories but finds the details difficult.

It occurred to me that history is recalled in one of two (or perhaps more) ways. For some people the dates matter, they provide a structure to order things by. For others it is the sequence, not the actual dates, which matters. These people are the storytellers. Time may be a fluid concept for them but the details of the stories are readily remembered, one leading to the next.

For generations storytelling was the way that wisdom, life lessons and history was passed from one generation to the next. In some cultures this continues today. School based education tends to focus on the details; remembering the dates and being able to recall them often takes a higher priority (and value) than ‘the story’. Will the push to ‘educate’ children in indigenous cultures where storytelling and the traditional culture is strong make their life ‘better’? *

Storytelling also provides an avenue for linking events in ways other than a strictly time sequenced order, for seeing the bigger picture. At a time when information can be accessed almost instantly, my feeling is that seeing the bigger picture and drawing the details and messagge together may be of more value in the long term. Which come to think of it, is a theme which also pops up in Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the World.

*To see more on this idea visit Schooling the World

They need Different Work, not MOTS (More Of The Same)

2011-05-18T16:01:00.001+08:00

'Terrific, well done. As your reward for finishing fast, here is another worksheet'

I have spoken to young children who have told me they had realised that getting 19 or 20 out of 20 in maths meant more maths, actually not just more maths but 'more of the same maths', so they made sure they scored highly enough to keep everyone happy, but not highly enough to be rewarded with another worksheet. They figure if they can already do it, why do they need more practice? They have a point.

I have also spoken to many gifted children who love the challenge of difficult work, but who are frustrated by having to show they can do the easy stuff first. By the time they get to the more challenging material, they are not so enthusiastic any more, their brain has wandered to more engaging past times. And I have seen many gifted children who make careless mistakes on easy tasks which don't demand their full attention, only to find that their results mean they are not offered the more challenging material which would really make their eyes shine.
Sometimes a teacher will take to heart requests from parents for something that challenges their child and provide something more difficult. For Homework. Which still usually means the child does what the rest of the class is doing and then they take the hard stuff home to do.

There is no surer way to turn off the passion for learning than rewarding completion of an easy task with more work, especially if the other children (who probably have more need for the practice) are not also going to be doing this 'more' work.

A fundamental characteristic of giftedness is the ease and speed of learning. Even moderately gifted children learn at 2 or 3 times the pace of more average ability students. For highly gifted and beyond it can me 4 times the pace (or up to 8 times the pace of the weakest students). This means they need less practice. It means they need to move on to new material more quickly. Research has shown that their learning is improved by working at this faster pace*.

There is no doubt that parents are excellent teachers; their children learned many things from them before they began school. However, if children are at school to learn, then bringing home new material to learn and master as homework while still working through regular class material at school suggests some further discussion about giftedness might be needed and that parents may have another opportunity to take the role of leading learning, this time with their child's teachers.

It is important that every child works at a level appropriate to their learning needs. The gifted are no exception. The key difference is that their needs are unlikely to be the same as the bulk of the class. Completing the easy stuff before they have a chance to work at the appropriate level isn't something we would ask all children to do. For gifted students it just doesn't make sense. In fact it doesn't make sense for any student.

*The excerpt below is from Karen Rogers's Research Synthesis on Gifted Provisions
Research on Instructional Delivery: Pacing, Process Modifications

The learning rate of children above 130 IQ is approximately 8 times faster than for children below 70 IQ
Gifted students are significantly more likely to retain science and mathematics content accurately when taught 2-3 times faster than "normal" class pace.
Gifted students are significantly more likely to forget or mislearn science and mathematics content when they must drill and review it more than 2-3 times

The purpose of education is to make friends your own age, isn't it?

2011-04-29T17:36:00.000+08:00

When a school raises concerns about a gifted child’s ability to socialise with others of the same age, parents could be mistaken for thinking that the purpose of education is to make friends your own age.

When social issues, in the guise of a child not being seen to interact well with others of the same age, are given as a reason not to accelerate a child one might be led to think that the purpose of going to school is social rather than provide a child with the chance to learn something new.

Adults are well aware that their social circle is not exclusive to others of the same age and yet in the school setting it is not uncommon to come across an expectation that all children the same age should get along. After all they are the same age. Unfortunately this way of thinking also assumes that all children are the same, that they all have the same interests and all learn the same way, at the same pace. It is tempting and convenient stance, but unfortunately does not reflect real life.

It is a myth that all gifted children have poor social skills. Research with populations of gifted children has shown that generally their social skills are better than average however when they are restricted to same age children for social interactions, gifted children may not have the opportunity to continue to continue to grow socially and their social skills may not ‘mature’ as they do. After all it is not possible to learn something from someone who doesn’t yet know (or demonstrate) it.

Friendship is a key element of the school experience for gifted children, just as it is for any child. However, what gifted children look for in friends is often quite different to others their age. International studies have found that children’s conception of friendship develops in stages and that they move through them sequentially. Miraca Gross in a study of 700 children found that what children look for in friends is determined by mental age much more so than by chronological age and that gifted children were substantially further along the sequence of stages than their same age peers of average ability.

Linda Silverman makes a telling statement about the role of friendship in the school experience for gifted children in her book Counseling the Gifted and Talented

"When gifted children are asked what they most desire, the answer is often 'a friend'. The children's experience of school is completely colored by the presence or absence of relationships with peers." p 72

The purpose of education may, amongst other things, be to make friends. But for gifted children, these friends are unlikely to be children of the same age, unless they too are gifted.

If you are interested to read more on friendship and gifted children you might like:
Play Partner or Sure Shelter: What gifted children look for in friendship
Friendship Patterns in Highly Intelligent Children
Being Me and Fitting In The Dilemma of Differentness

The power of connecting

2011-04-18T22:40:00.000+08:00

I spent the weekend at Hogwarts with 45 kids and nearly as many parents. It was the second Harry P and the Professors camp run by Australian Gifted Support in WA. A handful of ‘second years’ (children who also came along last year) were there but there were many new children and their parents.

One of the most wonderful things about watching gifted children when they are amongst like minds is the social dynamics. Many of these children experience a sense of isolation at school, where they find it hard to connect with other children their age. In many cases is it not as a result of poor social skills, more as a result of being at a different stage of development intellectually but also being at a different stage in terms of the development of friendship needs.

It is wonderful to see the invisible barriers fall away as they discover what they have in common. We often see the same sort relaxed and appropriate social interactions amongst the children attending the holiday programs. At the camp, many discovered their interest in Harry Potter was only the beginning.

I watched 2 girls who didn’t know each other before the camp sitting under a table immersed in a shared activity, oblivious to the fact everyone else was preparing for dinner. I observed chess games where a 6 year old was playing one of the older boys, a crowd of others watching around their shoulders, some of them were no doubt soaking up others moves and strategies and improving their own game even without picking up a piece. I watched as one child opened the piano in the corner of the room and started to play a piece they were learning and a less accomplished learner come along to take a turn when they finished. Children who didn’t know each other engaged in duets on the piano and clarinet. There were older ones helping younger ones, and the younger ones helping older kids with barely a consideration for the age difference.

The Saturday night concert was another wonderful example of these children’s respect for each other. A wide range of ages and skill levels showcased their talent with musical items, singing, dancing (including an amazing performance by 2 boys), telling jokes and performing skits. Although there was some stopping and re-starting at times it did not raise a comment and the audience were enthusiastic about each and every performance. Several parents commented that their child would not under any circumstances put themselves on display in that sort of way in their regular school, but had volunteered to do so at camp.

The ‘students’ at Hogwarts were organised into ‘houses’ and at various points throughout the weekend participated in a trivia quiz. It was a great accomplishment when the groups of 10 or so children put their own desire to right, first or loudest aside and work as part of a team. I couldn’t help but wonder how many had just brought home reports with less positive comments about their ability to work co-operatively or collaborate with others in the classroom.

And it was not just the children who discovered connections. Parents had the chance to get to know each other as well while they helped in the kitchen or while the children were busy with workshops. During an informal chat with parents someone who had been speaking in hushed tones about their child’s ability suddenly laughed and said they had just realised they didn’t have to whisper about it here. I also saw parents who had just met swapping email and phone numbers, others who commented that it was such a relief to be somewhere that others understood what they were experiencing. For many it was a relief to discover that they werent the only ones facing very similar challenges with school or understanding their child’s needs. They left feeling that they also belonged somewhere.

And that is a powerful feeling.

Advocacy is a process

2011-04-04T16:43:00.001+08:00

Advocating for your gifted child is an ongoing process. There is no ‘quick fix’ despite the temptation to cling to the idea that there is. Each day brings new challenges, new opportunities and decisions to be made.

Armed with a clear understanding of what your goal is and some sound (research based preferably!) information, you can set about making decisions that will align with your goal.

Knowing what the goal is, is often the easy part. Almost without exception, when I see parents, their goal is above all else, to have a child who is happy (see a previous post about this here). It is the process of getting to the goal which is more difficult to define. The path will be different for every family.

Working out what to advocate for, which things will move you closer to your goal is an ongoing challenge. Life is a changeable landscape and it is worth remembering that the advocacy process almost never proceeds along a direct path from where you are now to your goal. Even if have managed to get things working well and feel able to breathe in relief, you can find that the situation suddenly changes. What worked well just last week, is not a good match any longer. And so you start again.

Sometimes I work closely with families for a period of time, usually near the beginning of their journey as they work out what they need to know, then don’t hear from them for quite some time. Then something changes, a change of teacher, of school or an intellectual growth spurt perhaps which brings some new challenge to the fore.

The more you know about your child, the way they prefer to learn, their personal strengths and any weaker areas, their personal passions and what excites them, their achievement levels or performance in different subjects (as well as the degree of potential they have if you have access to this information), the more able you will be to fine tune your goal.

And it doesn’t matter how much you have learned, there is always more to learn. It is likely that you will continue to advocate in various ways for your child for many years. Even when they can advocate for themselves, they will probably still need you steering gently in the background.

Like a duck on a pond

2011-03-30T09:52:00.001+08:00

I came across this great analogy in the SENG newsletter today and thought it was worth sharing. I am sure some of you will agree this is what life can be like with gifted children. The only way I managed to capture it was via a screen shot and the quality isnt very good so in addition to the image below, here is what Therese Clifford of SENG wrote:

Parenting gifted children often reminds me of the image of a duck who, to the rest of the world, is seemingly 'floating' along on the pond, while the reality is that there is some mighty vigorous paddling going on underneath the water. Parents of gifted kids often navigate through each day like the duck who is paddling like crazy, trying to keep life on an even keel, trying to keep their little ones safe and sane and able to participate in the world. No-one sees the paddling and strife underneath. SENG not only provides an understanding of how the hyper-awareness and hyper-sensitivities of the gifted can lead to social and emotional upheaval in daily life, but also reaches out to the public to educate and raise awareness.

If you haven't come across the SENG website, it is definitely worth a look. And if you would like to see the complete newsletter this snippet came from you will find it here

Achievement tests vs IQ tests

2011-03-17T14:31:00.000+08:00

Different tests, test different things. Some are tests of achievement, while some are tests of potential. These are two completely different things.

Achievement tests measure current knowledge or skill development while tests of potential which include IQ tests of various sorts measure potential ability. Being a measure of skill development, achievement tests are directly influenced by what a child has learned to date. On the other hand the results of tests of potential don’t go in relation to how long you have been at school (as a result of school learning).

While ideally results of tests of potential will be reflected in the results of achievement testing, indicating a child is working at a level towards their potential, this is not always the case. A difference between the results of tests of potential and achievement is considered to indicate underachievement. The greater the difference between the results, the greater the underachievement and need for further investigation to identify the cause.

Is one test better than another?

It really depends on what you are measuring.

If you are testing what a child has learned, then tests of achievement are needed. Standardised tests provide information about how the child (and the class group) compares to other populations of the same year level or age.

Each school has their own schedule of collecting information on student achievement levels. Some test at the start of each year, some test at various year levels, some rely on NAPLAN and other testing programs, and some test only where achievement is of concern. There are many tests of achievement available, many being subject based. With a gifted child, testing above level is likely to be needed to show the limits of their learning.

If you are testing a child’s capacity for learning, then tests of potential are needed. There are a number of tests to measure potential, with different requirements with regard to training or expertise in order to administer them.

Schools sometimes use group administered IQ tests (such as the Nelson Verbal and Non Verbal tests, SPM, TOLA, MYAT or the like) at various points. These tests can be given to a class group or a number of children at the same time and generally take a multiple choice format. Most often students will indicate their answer by filling in a bubble on an answer sheet which is then marked by a machine and a report of scores sent to the school. These tests provide a ready method for screening students to identify the most able (or those in need of assistance) within a year level. Rarely are these results looked at in more detail than the final score.

Alternatively an IQ test can be administered individually, by a psychologist. The most common examples of individual IQ tests are the WISC IV (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children 4th Edition) and the SB 5 (Stanford Binet 5th Edition). Children have to generate their own answers to questions on this test (rather than choose from multiple choices). Testing and scoring an individual IQ test follows strict protocols for scoring answers and scoring is done by the person administering the testing. The results of individual IQ tests provide a lot more information about the student’s profile, areas of strength and relative weakness as well as insights into potential learning difficulties or things to follow up. They are also likely to provide a more accurate measure of potential than a group administered test.

Are the results of one test better than the other?

An individually administered IQ test will provide you with a more detailed and accurate measure of a child’s potential because the child has had to generate the answers themselves (not choose from a selection so the chance factor is reduced). The psychologist administering the test also has the chance to observe and comment on how the child approached the testing. Insights into a reflective nature, aversion to getting things wrong, and the part any motor difficulties (or other problems) may have played in their results etc can be noted.

Which test result is ‘right’?

Sometimes highly gifted children (based on results of an individual IQ test) do not score as highly on group administered tests. Sometimes, having picked up the importance of the test from the teacher’s comments, they take great care answering questions but do not finish the test. Sometimes highly gifted children are confused by the apparent simplicity of the questions or answer choices. This is not hard to understand when you consider that the test is designed so that the majority of students will be able to complete most questions in order for it to spread students across a standard distribution.

Sometimes gifted children, particularly the more creative or lateral thinking students have difficulty choosing between the multiple choice options. They may be able to see more than one ‘logical’ (to their thinking) answer amongst the choices. They are then left with the dilemma of choosing the ‘most interesting’, ‘most likely’, the one the teacher is most likely to want or the first one they thought of……….. the chance that it wont be the required answer are increased, their score possibly negatively affected as a result.

Where you have results of an individually administered IQ test, these are likely to provide you with a more accurate reflection of a child’s potential ability than a group administered test, even if the results seem anomalous with a child’s current achievement.

The more information which is gathered, the more complete the picture of a child’s potential and achievement will be. Where you have results from an individual test which are not reflected in group administered tests of potential, it is important to look further at the results. Did the child finish the test? Did they miss a question which meant their correct answers to following questions were on the wrong line? Talking to a child about why they chose certain answers can also provide useful insight into their thinking.

Why test above level?

2011-03-15T10:29:00.000+08:00

I have been asked recently what value there is in testing above level when a child is already doing well. Think about it this way. If a child is capable of adding double digit numbers but an in class test (or standardised test) only asks them to add single digit numbers they may well get all the questions right (although they may not, but that is a matter for another post). In the results there is no clue that the child is capable of working on more advanced material or how advanced that material might be.

Testing ‘above level’ simply means giving a child a test designed or intended for children who are older than them, or for a point further through the education system. It may test material a child has not yet been taught but they may be able to do.

It is much more difficult to get all the answers right on an above level test, and if a child does, then a higher level test is needed in order to gain useful information. Otherwise all it tells us is that a child can answer all those questions, nothing more useful.

The really useful information that can be gained from an above level test is not in the final score. It is in analysing which questions a child got wrong. And the error analysis is really the most important part of the testing. This provides us with information about what the child needs to learn next. This is effectively a prescription for their learning needs.

The questions they got right serve to show what they already know (but may not have been taught yet) and provide a marker point for their current skill development. There is really nothing to be gained in teaching a child something they already know so indentifying what they already know is a way to effectively ‘test out’ of that content and move on to something new.

Few schools offer regular opportunities for above level testing but it doesn’t hurt to ask. This is testing that should be able to be done in the school (it should not require the psych to do it) as it is achievement testing (not a test of potential).

The next challenge comes in accessing testing far enough above level. In the early years of Primary school, one year above Year level may be enough. By middle primary above level testing probably needs to start 2 years above Year level, by the end of Primary school, testing would usually need to start at 3 years beyond Year level. If a child scores highly on an above level test, further testing at a higher level again is needed. What you are trying to do is establish the limits of the child’s current learning. What you see in the classroom is almost certainly not going to be a good indication of what that might be for gifted children, even those who are not achieving highly.

The EXPLORE test is an opportunity for gifted children in Years 4, 5 or 6 to take a test designed for older students (13 and 14 year olds in fact). By raising the ceiling, parents and teachers can gain valuable insights into a child’s capabilities which might remain hidden in the regular classroom. You may like to read more about EXPLORE and see if this test would be useful for your child.

What about self esteem?
Sometimes parents ask about whether it will dent a child’s self esteem taking a test where they probably don’t know all the answers. If we look at what research has shown us about self esteem we see that it builds from engaging with and working through a task that is challenging in a way that it does not when working on simple material.

I think it is important to consider the situation the child may find themselves in on a daily basis if they are not able to access curriculum at a sufficiently challenging level. We know that this can be stressful in the same way that material which is much too challenging. Research has also reinforced that intrinsic motivation has a strong place in our drive to achieve and to find satisfaction in our lives. It is difficult to be intrinsically motivated when challenge is lacking.

Some children feel validated when they score highly and prefer to continue to reaffirm their ability without being challenged (Carol Dweck calls this a fixed mindset). Others thrive on challenge and the chance to stretch (a flexible mindset). I talked about the difference in a recent post which included an excellent graphic showing the differences over time in achievement levels of the two groups.

You can't fail an above level test
As the test is meant for older children and is likely to test material that the child may not have been taught as yet, it is not possible to fail an above level test. This is an important point to share with a child who may be shy of challenge.

“That was cool! Hard but cool”
Over the years I have heard many comments from students as they met their parents after finishing the EXPLORE. Some comment that the test was tricky, occasionally one is a little crest fallen that they have not found it as easy as their usual experience. But by far the majority of comments are positive and their eyes shining and I hear them saying how much they enjoyed the chance to really have to work at something, that it was the only time they have taken a test they have had to really think about.

Most children I have tested using subject based above level tests also finish the session smiling, some ask if there is more testing they can do.

Is it any use as far as school goes??
A parent whose child has taken the EXPLORE test in each of the last 2 years emailed me recently to tell me about their experience.

"The Explore test has been invaluable to us and her school as one of the forms of assessment in making the decision to accelerate her by us and her school."

When we have to repeat a task

2011-03-07T09:43:00.001+08:00

A few days ago I watched a TED talk by an enthusiastic, if somewhat eccentric chap by the name of Clifford Stoll.

He reminded me so much of some of the gifted kids I have met over the years – constantly in motion, his mind darting from one idea to another, his rapid fire speech peppered with, what is known in our house, as ‘random facts’ – snippets that wouldn’t normally be part of conversation.

Sadly the resemblance to most gifted adults was much weaker. Somewhere along the way, for many, the enthusiasm, passion and energy fades away.

He did make an interesting comment which might shed some light on that. In his opinion

The first time you do something, you are a scientist.
The second time you do something, you are an engineer.
The third time you do something, you are just a technician.

Or put another way, the more you have to do something, the more the wonder fades.

The initial need to think, question, hypothesise and test ideas and skills makes way for a focus on details and tidying things up. Eventually little real attention is needed to complete the task which we can execute with much less effort. The motivation for the task has faded along with the practice.

Research has shown that repeated practice for gifted students can reduce their performance over time, particularly in subjects like mathematics (** more on this along with a reference below) Not only does having to repeatedly practice something you have already mastered take the initial shine off the achievement, a degree of boredom often follows, which can in turn lead to a lack of attention to the task at hand and so to careless errors. Students who have ‘tuned out’ and whose brain is partially occupying itself with other things may then miss important new material when it is introduced.

I am sure you can think of examples of musical performances which had been practiced until they were technically excellent but lacking in passion. School assembly or concert items sometimes also fall into this category when they have been practiced to the point of predictability and the excitement is extinguished. The buzz of the discovery, the excitement of that ‘ah ha’ moment when we discover we can do something has faded.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t practice things, but perhaps moving on to build on a skill as soon as we are able is a way to keep the enthusiasm flowing and avoid a ‘discovery’ becoming routine task. Remaining in the scientist mindset is a sure way to push boundaries and make new discoveries and well as new learning.

G&T students are significantly more likely to retain science, mathematics, foreign language content accurately when taught 2-3 times faster than ‘normal’ class pace
G&T students are significantly more likely to forget or mislearn science, mathematics, foreign language content when they must drill and review it more than 2-3 times after mastery

Reserach Based Best Practices in Gifted Education. Conference presentation by Prof Karent Rogers at the 2006 AAEGT National Conference in Fremantle. If you would like to have a look at the PowerPoint of this presentation, please email me.

Appetite

2011-03-03T10:10:00.001+08:00

Kids get hungry and need to be fed. If they don’t eat they get cranky and uncomfortable. Life is difficult for them and for us.

However, it is not just their body which gets hungry. Gifted kids have an intellectual appetite that must also be fed. If their brain is ‘hungry’ they can be just as cranky and uncomfortable (but often not really know why – it doesn’t come with the physical sensation of hungry that is more easily recognised).

Not surprisingly perhaps, the emotional response (melt down or acting out perhaps) often calms down when their brains are appropriately fed (and watered)

The Power of Connection

2011-02-28T10:00:00.001+08:00

A year or so ago I was joining a group of ladies and we were each asked to bring something along to an evening that said something about ourselves as a way to get to know each other. Textiles are an important part of my life and I own quite a lot to pairs of scissors. In various places around my home I have scissors for embroidery, for dressmaking, for cutting paper, offset ones for snipping threads when machine embroidering or quilting and duck bill ones for trimming layers of fabric. I have pinking shears (including a pair which belonged to my grandmother), baby nail scissors, ones for snipping things from magazines... even a tiny antique pair given to me recently by a friend. So my first thought was to take a pair of my scissors.

Then I thought about what scissors are used for - cutting things apart or for separating things.

Much of what I do both in my work (and in a different way in my creative endeavours) involves bringing things together. In the end I gathered a whole lot of buttons from the various jars and tins they are stored in, some old and some new, some shiny and some with hidden qualities and put them all into an old jar for my ‘show and tell’. That seemed to tell more of the story.

We are naturally social creatures and have a strong need for connection.We work hard to ‘fit in’ with a group but strive even harder to find a place where we naturally ‘fit’. The value of finding like minds should not be underestimated. I have spoken with parents moved to tears when their child clicks with another gifted child, when they see their child relax and the exchange is not guarded, when they almost need to be prised apart when it is time to part.

It is not just the kids who need to feel that connection. Finding somewhere where you can share your challenges and frustrations as well as the joys and delights of parenting gifted children is just as important for parents.

I am fortunate to speak to so many families, either in person or via email. Inevitably someone mentions a need they have, or perhaps a skill they possess and this is just what someone else I have spoken to is seeking. Or I come across something in my reading and searching which might be of interest to some one I spoke to. Or someone tells me about their experience with a school, a tutor, an allied health professional, a website……..

These are the times where the button analogy seems to fit. Where I can put people in touch with each other, can pass on a link or contact, help people to get together or pass on some information which might make someone’s journey a little less bumpy. Finding someone else who is or has homeschooled their child; someone else coping with a highly sensitive or intense child; someone who doesn’t think it so unusual to be reading Feynman’s essays as bedtime stories or explaining the intricacies of inner space; or who just ‘gets it’ when you talk about how ineffective star charts have turned out to be, can make all the difference.

Mind the Gaps

2011-02-25T10:01:00.002+08:00

Many years ago my oldest daughter was cruising along at school. She learned quickly and sometimes read a book under the table when things were re-taught or when repetition was involved. As was inevitable, she sometimes also tuned out new information but was able to use her reasoning ability to work out what she might have missed. As well as being highly able reader, she was also good at maths. Her confidence in her maths ability was shaken however when she suddenly found she was making mistakes with subtraction. How could this be happening? Her knowledge of number combinations was sound and she had been getting them right, so it was initially a bit of a mystery as to what was going on.

Fortunately she was in a small class and her teacher had the foresight and the time to observe her as she worked and did discover what was going on. Somewhere along the line, my daughter had ‘missed’ a crucial piece of information which made subtraction different to addition. Order mattered! While in addition you can add the numbers top to bottom or bottom to top, this is not the case with subtraction. You must subtract the bottom number from the top one…….. this gap in her understanding hadn’t shown up right away because initially the subtraction sums had been simple, the larger number was on top and no borrowing was required. It was not until things got more complicated that the gap became apparent.

I am often reminded that just because a child is gifted it doesn't mean they have mastered every skill, or know 'everything'. It is tempting to think if they understand a complex concept, they will know how to do other things, if they know so much about outer space that they will also know how to write a research question and present the information ..... There have been a few times I have wondered, based on the comments made by a teacher, whether some people might believe a gifted child comes pre-loaded with knowledge, in the same sort of way your computer comes with some programs already loaded, and you simply insert a disc to load more.

It is quite possible for a gifted child to have gaps in their knowledge or learning. The important thing to remember is that these gaps are likely to be filled much more quickly than is usual (as the pace with which such children learn is much faster than typical). It is also possible to see skills develop unevenly, for a 6 year old to read and copmrehend like a 10 year old, but to have hand writing or spelling typical of a 6 year old.

It is also quite possible for a gifted child to have a learning dysfunction or preferred earning style which makes learning some things more difficult for them. It is important to realise that these kids are often really good at hiding these weakenesses.

Being the teacher of a gifted child means constantly scaffolding and feeding their appetite for new ideas and big concepts. It also means being constantly on the lookout for anomalies or discrepancies which might hint at gaps or problems, some of which may have been there for a long time. It can help to think about learning as a wall of bricks. If one is missed out earlier, the strength of the wall above is affected and eventually it shows up.

Do be sensitive though if you discover gaps. Don't tell a child "you should already know this". They probably already know that! It does however provide a great opportunity. To track back and discover the gap can make a real difference to the child. If these was ever a way to enhance the relationship between a gifted child and their teacher, this is a great one.

2011 EXPLORE test coming up

2011-02-23T21:58:00.000+08:00

If something doesn't feel right....

2011-02-22T19:03:00.003+08:00

Last year I asked some friends via email a question about how many senses they thought we have. Some took the question at face value and responded with the typical 5 we are taught at school. Some responded with an extra here or there. One friend included a more comprehensive list and it included 'the mummy sense'. As she said "You know the one where you just know something is going to happen right before it does, or when you just know that that game is going to end in tears minutes from now, or when you wake just before your baby does." She felt it was hard to pin down exactly what sense it actually is, it looked almost like an instinct (except dads don't have it in the same way, nor do non-parents).

Perhaps she was talking about what what we call 'intuition'.

Intuition is our ability to tap into our inner wisdom, to 'know' what is right, what is going to happen next or whether we need more information to make a decision. While it seems to happen without thinking, it seems that our decision or feeling actually arises after extremely rapid analysis of the information at hand, our brain comparing this information to it's database of experience or knowledge, and making a judgement.

It is not unusual when parents call or email to organize a consultation for them to describe a sense that 'something' is not quite right, that they 'feel' their child is capable of more, or that there is more to the story than the analysis they have been given by teachers, family or even medicos. Most indicte that this feeling is accompanied by a physical sensation, a tension of sorts, what is sometimes described as a 'gut feeling'. And given that there doesn't appear to be 'proof' or certainty to back this feeling these same parents often mirror the doubt expresssed by others about it, and many virtually apologise for mentioning it.

I find it interesting that we doubt our intuition so readily. We even doubt it with the same conviction that we doubt the child who correctly completes maths problems with no evidence of having worked them out. They cant possibly 'just know'...... the working out is evidence of the certainty.... It seems our intuition is effectively silenced by the need for 'proof'. If we cant be sure, we should not trust our own conviction.

And yet the parents (it is mostly mothers who call me) are very often right. They are aware that something just isn't quite right, something doesn't sit completely comfortably with all that they know. They aren't looking for their child to be something they are not (actually many express a wish for their child to be 'normal' at some point on their journey, although exactly what that is no-one seems to be clear). These parents are looking for ways to help their child be all that they can be. It is perhaps most common with parents of gifted children with learning difficulties, particularly where the child has been compensating sufficiently well to avoid attracting too much attention to their difficulties, nor falling behind.

Trusting our instincts or intent might be the best thing we can do for our child (and ultimately for ourselves). If we can overlook the lack of certainty, and trust that our brain has tapped our inner wisdom, we can be confident that we are on the right track.

My advice to parents when we discuss this 'gut feeling' that something is not quite right is, in many cases, to trust their own judgement. If they feel like they don't have all the answers they need, keep searching. They may not turn up straight away but trust that looking means they will in time.

If we remember that everything we learn or try adds to our mental data base and that our brain will scan this new information as well before it settles on an 'intuitive' decision, we can perhaps feel a little more confident in heeding this sense.

It can be difficult not to defer to those we perceive as 'experts', particularly in relation to education (or health), but don't be tempted to assume that anyone knows your child better than you do. If you feel that what you have been told doesnt sit quite right, trust yourself. Keep looking.

It all depends on how you look at it

2011-02-10T10:00:00.002+08:00

So many things depend on how we look at them. A glass is half full, or half empty. The sun which is warming to one person is burning to another. The dog pestering you out of bed is doing you a favour, or spoiling your sleep in…….

Our perception and assumptions about our intelligence are no different. The way we think about out intelligence makes a big difference to the path we follow.

A mindset is a set of entrenched assumptions which provide an incentive to continue to think or behave in a certain way. The term was popularised recently by Carol Dweck with her book titled Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. She believes that your beliefs - your mindset - shapes what you achieve. And this is irrespective of your level of potential.

She divides views of intelligence into 2 types. Someone with a fixed view of intelligence believes that intelligence is an entity and we have each been endowed with a finite supply. Basically, you have it, or you don’t. On the other hand if you have a growth mindset you would believe intelligence can be expanded through practice and effort.

Those with a growth mindset are more likely to seek out challenge, to learn more deeply and to achieve more. Those with a fixed mindset will likely play it safe, choose the easy options, shy away from challenge and ultimately limiting their options.

Dan Pink recently included The 3 Rules of Mindsets on his blog recently and I thought they were worth repeating it here.

RULE #1Fixed mindset: Look clever at all costs. (“The main thing I want when I do my school work is to show how good I am at it.”)

Growth mindset: Learn, learn, learn. (“It is much more important for me to learn things in my classes than it is to get the best grades.”)

RULE #2Fixed mindset: It should come naturally. (“To tell you the truth, when I work hard at my school work it makes me fee like I’m not very smart.”)

Growth mindset: Work hard, effort is key. (“The harder you work at something, the better you’ll be at it.”)

RULE #3Fixed mindset: Hide your mistakes and conceal your deficiencies. (After a disappointing exam score, “I’d spend less time on this subject from now on. I’d try not to take this subject ever again, and I would try to cheat on the next test.”)

Growth mindset: Capitalize on your mistakes and confront your deficiencies. (After a disappointing exam score, “I’d work harder in this class and spend more time studying for the tests.”)

Dweck isn’t the only person to talk about personality and approach having an impact on the development of talent. Francoys Gagne’s Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent includes Intrapersonal factors as contributors, Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers also examines how a person’s environment combined with personality factors shapes their path towards success. Martin Seligman's work on resilience and positive outlook al

What separates Dweck perhaps is that she believes a growth mindset can be learned.

I recently came across an excellent graphic which clearly shows the differences between the two ways of looking at the world (and the comparative inputs and outcome of each). It is one worth printing out and leaving lying around.

Waiting, Waiting, Waiting..............

2011-02-07T22:39:00.001+08:00

Today I began Italian lessons at the local Learning Centre. I had enrolled in the Beginners level course because even though I have listened in while my children and husband have been learning at various times, I felt I had only snippets and was definitely a ‘beginner’ (a fact reinforced by daughter #1 who dissuaded me from buying an Intermediate level text over the summer)

Today I also had an experience which was a powerful reminder of the situation for many gifted children in classrooms where the degree of challenge and the pace of learning is not a good match for their learning needs.

For the first 90 mins I struggled to keep paying attention. My language skills are truly very basic (and I am not understating them) but for the majority of the lesson nothing new, nothing that I didn’t already know, was covered. I kept wondering when we were going to get on to something new, something that would make my brain focus, how much longer the lesson would run………. The lady sitting next to me (who has previously learned Spanish and also has a smattering of French) seemed to be having the same problem. At one point she commented to me that she really learns better when she has to stretch. On the whole though, everyone else looked like they were crunching their eyebrows. So I was left thinking maybe I could get more out of it, if I tried harder………… I have to admit that in the last 20 minutes there were a few new things, but it seems they were included to tantalise, dangling a little of what might be to come but came with the comment "But don't worry about that yet, we will get to it later.

I do not mean to cast the teacher in a poor light. He is a volunteer, an elderly gent who no doubt has a good knowledge of Italian (and French as it turns out). And I am sure he was presenting as he has in the past, using materials he has used in the past. And as it was the first session so perhaps he was ‘sounding us out’ in terms of skill development. Does all of this sound familiar? Remarkably like the first few days of the school year in many places perhaps.

So the real test will come next week. If the teacher is astute, appreciates that there is a range of skill development amongst those coming into his class, and senses the differing rates of learning within the group (some of the ‘crunchy eyebrow’ folk seemed to pick it up more readily than others), then some differentiation might occur……….. if not, perhaps the bulk of my learning will probably happen outside of ‘school’.

Which is, sadly, what I hear too often from gifted kids.

New ways of interacting

2011-01-31T23:14:00.000+08:00

Another school year is just beginning. This year for the first time since 1995 we haven’t had a ‘back to school’ routine happening in our house at the end of January. While I wont be seeing anyone off to school this week, last week I still found myself holding my breathe when my youngest started school half a world away in Turin in northern Italy. Not only is she on the other side of the world, she is coping with school and learning in a language she barely knows and with coming and going in the snow and cold. What ever her motivation, she has spread her wings and this will no doubt be a year of amazing experiences.

The world is a much smaller place than it was when I was her age. Technology allows us to keep in touch with ease, to talk to her and even see the world she sees via Skype, email, FaceBook, Photo Bucket and a whole host of others services so familiar to our children born squarely in the land of Digital Natives. I am not expecting to find a hand written letter in the mail any time this year…………..

Having recently become the owner of an iPad (something that I hope my children wont ‘out know’ me on, at least for a little while), I have been discovering all manner of new ways to become immersed in a digital world. The array of apps is quite astounding and amongst the frivolous are some great opportunities, particularly for young learners. But how do you identify the good amongst the less good?

Some searching turned up Planet App: Kid’s Book apps are everywhere. But are they any good? . This article suggests some possible criteria for selecting picture book apps and includes some pointers which look useful. It is worth a look if you have young children and are interested in ways smart technology can provide opportunities for parent child interaction and immersion in literature.

Over the past few year I have observed young children happily occupying themselves with their parent’s Smart Phone while the adults talked during consultations. One 4 year old boy I met a couple of years ago stands out in my memory. He was busy typing and sending emails to his grandmother while we talked, checking on spelling now and then and contributing to our conversation as well. Up to that point I had been impressed by my young niece who had inadvertently phoned me while her mother was driving…….

Clearly I am a bit of a late comer to the world where there is an app for just about anything you can think of. I knew this for sure this morning when I came across an article titled Preschoolers better at navigating iPhone than tying their shoes.

That made me think. Maybe we need an app for learning to tie shoe laces............

I did it in my head..........

2011-01-13T12:49:00.000+08:00

About 6 or 7 years ago my daughter insisted she had done her music practice. We were discussing the issue because as far as I could see her guitar had not come out of its case for days. She insisted that she had done her practice in her head. Although she still seemed to be making progress in her music learning, perhaps you can understand my scepticism!

Not long afterwards when I was talking to my brother in California I mentioned the discussion about the music practice which my daughter insisted she had done in her head. I know my brother and my daughter share a very similar visual approach to the world and learning but I was puzzled to hear him reply ‘Of course, I did it that way too.’

Over the years as I have watched and listened I have come to appreciate the great benefits strong visual spatial skills can bring to learning but I still hadn’t quite come to terms with mental music practice.

A few years ago I read about a study which showed the brain activity of a monkey watching another peel and eat a banana (or something along those lines) was very similar to the monkey performing the task. At this point I began to wonder whether watching her teacher demonstrate a new skill was actually a form of ‘practice’ which might explain the continued learning with so little evident practice…….. I had also read about elite gymnastics and their coaches who used visualisation to assist them in mastering new and complicated skills, but didnt link this to learning music.

Just recently I read of another study in which brain scanning techniques have demonstrated that mental rehearsal or practice does actually have a learning effect on neuronal pathways in the brain. Although the ‘learning’ was not quite as marked as in those who had done actual physical practice, it was quite a bit better than no practice at all. It also seemed to have a priming effect so that a practical session or lesson following mental rehearsal resulted in almost the same degree of learning overall as continual physical practice.

The mental music practice has come up for discussion again recently and I now have to conceded that perhaps the practice I had been sceptical about had actually been done and that the value of this visual, mental rehearsal was something that my daughter instinctively knew about years ago.

It's finally here! Gifted Children : Resource for parents and teachers in WA

2010-12-24T16:37:00.000+08:00

Just in time for Christmas............ copies of the new Resource Book finally arrived a couple of days ago!! More information can be found on the website if you are looking for some holiday reading, or getting in early planning for the coming year.

I hope you all have a safe and happy holiday season and I will look forward to seeing many of you during next year.

Merry Christmas

Are You Gifted? More thoughts on mixed messages

2010-12-10T09:30:00.001+08:00

Think for a moment about how you would respond if someone asked you “Are you gifted?”.

Judging by the responses of the many families and teachers I have worked with over the last 10 years the chances are that you would squirm a bit and your answer would probably be a bit evasive. Only about 10% of those who are gifted answer positively with a ‘yes!’

What does this tell your child?

What does it say about how you define giftedness?

Does it communicate that it is OK to be gifted??

I think it would be fair to say that most parents see giftedness as a positive attribute. Yet many are reluctant to talk about it openly, even within their own family. Few talk about the implications, both positive and negative of being different, thinking faster, being more aware.

Sometimes parents have not come to terms with their own giftedness, sometimes they worry that mentioning it will encourage their child to become ‘big headed’ or conceited. Some worry that mentioning it might make their child ‘feel different’. (The reality is that many gifted children are aware of a sense of difference often from a very young age but can’t put their finger on ‘why’, especially if it is not talked about)

Would we worry in the same way about the possibility of an inflated ego if the child was highly skilled in sport, or music or dance?? Discussing these abilities surely also carries the chance that other children might feel bad if they aren’t as capable.

Being gifted doesn’t make someone ‘better than’ anyone else. They are simply ‘better at’ some things than most other people are going to be.

By not mentioned giftedness, or discouraging your child from mentioning it, you send a confusing message. That being gifted is a good thing and you should be proud of your abilities but don’t let anyone know too much about them….

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

2010-12-07T13:50:00.000+08:00

What message do we give gifted children?

Consider for a moment a local school. It is much like other schools you might encounter, with mixed ability classes but this one does have some pull-out opportunities for gifted students (or perhaps for talented students – see a previous post from Aug 30 ).

Now consider another school, also fairly typical of other schools you might find nearby where you live. Classes at this school are also mostly mixed ability groups, with a little more challenge offered to the highest performing students in some subjects. A wide array of co-curricular opportunities are offered after school for students. Many of these involve competition at some point against other schools or teams.

Now think about yet another school. Like the ones already mentioned, it has mixed ability classes. A parent of a child who has been identified as gifted talks to the teacher about her child’s need for greater challenge and complexity to re-engage him in learning. The teacher responds with a well thought out package of work to be completed at home over a number of weeks.

Whether they are aware of it or not, each of these schools is giving a clear message to their gifted students. Although they recognise that their gifted students need something different which is positive, they are communicating the message that it is not important enough or perhaps that it is inconvenient to meet those needs during the school day.

While you think about what message your child might be picking up from the setting they find themselves in, here is one last (local) school to consider. What does a school communicate when the out of class opportunities are held in a building called "The Learning Centre"?? That ‘learning’ happens here, but not in the classroom? (while I first heard about this Learning Centre from a parent, the final comment was made by a student who told me she had figured out why she didnt seem to learn much most of the week)

Motivation and performance pay for teachers

2010-10-13T13:27:00.001+08:00

During this year I have read a lot about motivation, initially as part of a project I was undertaking but also because I find if fascinating understanding what makes us behave the way we do.

Periodically I get a newsletter from Dan Pink, the author of Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us (and another book worth reading called A Whole New Mind). Today’s newsletter included a snippet about motivation and ‘merit pay’ for teachers, specifically looking at whether we should link teacher pay to test scores. I had followed the discussion earlier in the year on this topic and at time Pink had commented the he ‘couldn't see a way to construct a so-called "merit pay" scheme that was good for students, fair to teachers, and consistent with what we know about motivation’.

So when the latest newsletter moved from conjecture to mentioning the results of a 3 year study, the first of its kind to systematically examine the effects of merit pay on student achievement, it had my attention.

The study was conducted in the USA at Vanderbilt University's National Center on Performance Incentives. The purpose of the Centre is to address what it believes is one of the most contested questions in public education:

Do financial incentives for teachers, administrators, and schools affect the quality of teaching and learning?

What did the study find?

Overall, performance bonuses for teachers had no effect on student’s achievement. (p 36)

‘Merit pay’ is currently on the agenda for Australian teachers. I am not a political creature as a rule and this occasion is no different. My interest is in providing information and encouraging people to think, ideally with some soundly based information to start from.

Just because performance based reward systems are common in the workplace, it does not mean they are effective, or that they lead to the desired (or expected) result. Some of the most effective workplaces (in terms of results and staff satisfaction levels) have in place systems that seem at odds with the popular perception of how to get the best out of people.

Perhaps the important thing is to be clear about what we want (or expect) as a result of rewarding teachers (or students for that matter, but that is a topic for another day). If it is ‘better’ teachers, greater commitment to or ongoing development within the profession, that is one thing. If it is to see an increase student’s achievement level that may well be another.

While the Fact Sheet on performance pay for teachers in Australia mentions assessing a teacher’s contribution to the school community, support for other teachers, teamwork, involvement in extra curricular activities and further professional development as well as student achievement, it is easy to see how the media attention generated by the My Schools website might actually give the community the impression that it is all about student results, that better results indicate better teachers.

It strikes me that the ability of any single teacher to ‘add value’ (show improvement in student achievement) might be influenced by all the teachers the child has had previously. A child does not arrive in a new classroom as a clean slate. They bring attitudes, level of engagement, learning habits and patterns of skills that have been built up over time. They also bring the influence of their circumstances outside of school, the family relationships, home environment, the value that is placed on education in their culture or community, and even their economic circumstances.

Some of the best work teachers do isn’t evident straight away. If merit pay becomes tied to achievement, we might be missing the mark and overlooking some of the best teachers.

If you are intersted you will find the Vanderbilt report here and an Australian report on performance pay for teachers here. This one distinguishes between merit pay, knowledge- and skills-based pay, and professional certification.

Quote

2010-10-08T09:59:00.001+08:00

"The biggest mistake of past centuries in teaching has been to treat all students as if they were variants of the same individual and thus to feel justified in teaching them all the same subjects the same way." Howard Gardner

Another Opinion

2010-10-07T00:11:00.001+08:00

An article appeared in the Opinion section of the West Australian on yesterday focussing on gifted children. It looked promising, the title “Labelled, judged and left to cope” would seem to represent the situation for more than a few gifted children in the education system, but I was sadly disappointed there after. I think it is such a shame when ‘giftedness’ remains something of a conversation stopper in many circles and when so many people have trouble even using the ‘g’ word, that an article which fuels such confusion about gifted issues makes the general press.

While I don’t have a problem with the right to hold an opinion, I do believe that if a person is as passionate about gifted children as the author purports to be, the opportunity for an article like this could better be used to promote positive community perceptions of gifted children and their needs. My disappointment arises from the fact that the outcome of the piece appearing on p 21 of the West is likely to result in yet more families facing the same myth-conceptions and barriers to getting their child’s particular learning needs met as others have faced in the past.

There is a clear distinction between giftedness and talent in the model the various education systems base their policy documents on. The terms are not interchangeable. Using the words as if they are adds no clarity to discussions. It only encourages the community to think that 'gifted' always equals 'high performing student'. The reality is that many of our most intellectually gifted students are not performing highly.

The 2001 Senate Inquiry Report “The Education of Gifted Children” found that “there has been little progress for gifted children since [the previous inquiry in] 1988”. It agreed that gifted children have special needs in the education system, noting that “for many their needs are not being met; and many suffer underachievement, boredom, frustration and psychological distress as a result” (foreword). It went on to note that an estimated 75% of gifted students are underachieving (performing below their level of potential).

Our most gifted students are the ones least likely to have their ability recognised or needs met particularly without someone advocating on their behalf. In the last month or so a number of families with highly gifted (and beyond) children who have not managed to secure a place in a selective program at high school have contacted me. It is not as a result of lack of ability, but more likely as a result of the lack of opportunity to develop that potential into ‘talent’, for them to become one of the high performing students.
Finding gifted students is not always easy but regardless of whether we label them ‘gifted’, ‘talented’, ‘bright’, ‘good at’ or use any other label that comes to mind or becomes culturally important, they still have learning needs which are different to other kids the same age.

The concept of a highly able child being given more work rather than different work is, unfortunately, common. It shows a lack of understanding of perhaps the most central characteristic of giftedness – ease and speed of learning. When gifted children are expected to complete (correctly) simple material before being offered something that is more engaging or more appropriately challenging, the extra work becomes both a reward and a punishment. It certainly isn’t ‘acceleration’ when the child has to go back to the simple work again the next lesson. If we drove our car in that fashion we would probably be shepherded off the road but in a very short time we woudl almost certainly find ourselves the mechanic’s (if we are lucky, a talented one whose skills are within the top 10% of mechanics available to work on our car).

Work at an appropriately challenging level and appropriate pace is a right of every child in the education system. It is provided for in the Curriculum Framework Overarching Statement which all schools in WA are bound by as outlined below.

3. Inclusivity

The Curriculum Framework is intended for all students in Western Australian schools. Inclusivity means providing all groups of students, irrespective of educational setting, with access to a wide and empowering range of knowledge, skills and values. It means recognising and accommodating the different starting points, learning rates and previous experiences of individual students or groups of students. It means valuing and including the understandings and knowledge of all groups. It means providing opportunities for students to evaluate how concepts and constructions such as culture, disability, race, class and gender are shaped. (p 17)

‘More work’ is not acceleration. It is more work. If a child has demonstrated that they have completed the curriculum at a particular level then there is not ‘more’ they can do, at least without repeating something they have already shown they know. Moving on to the next step in the development of knowledge is not doing ‘more’ work, it is doing ‘different’ work. Appropriately challenging different work one would hope.

Confusing ‘more work’ with acceleration is only likely to compound reluctance of schools to put into place a successful strategy supported by more than 70 years of research showing it to be successful. Acceleration is a placement decision, it provides a closer match between the learner and the curriculum they are offered. It is considered to be the least utilised but most useful strategy for meeting the needs of our intellectually gifted children. Strangely, we have no hesitation in using the same strategy for talent development in sport or the creative arts (music, dance etc) where children are moved on through the stages as they demonstrate readiness.

That there are few high school aged children at university is subject to debate but actually says more about the reluctance of schools to allow students to work on content at a level that meets their needs, than on the success of acceleration as a strategy. In the last 5 years I have seen a significant shift in the willingness of schools to accelerate students. While there are still too many schools where parents are wrongly told it is ‘damaging’, ‘doesn’t work’, or the ‘policy prohibits it’ (none of which are true in the general sense) there are now a large number of students I have worked with who have been accelerated. In a few years time we will start to see these young people become students of 'high school age' who are studying at university. While many have only been accelerated a single year, a handful have been radically accelerated and will be very young by the usual standards when they complete their high school years, probably very successfully. A couple of years ago one of the coveted General Exhibition award winners was only 15 years of age.

Acceleration isn’t all about the academic side of things though. It also provides the child with the opportunity to interact with others at a similar intellectual level, the chance to continue to develop social interaction skills in a meaningful setting, to collaborate, to learn the skills of learning, to be required to think, reason, justify, construct an argument……….. Just imagine where those sorts of skills could take, not only the child, but also our society.

I agree that systematically building thinking skills (‘value adding’ as it is referred to in the article) can only help our children, all of our children. After all they will grow into a world we can’t even imagine let alone prepare them for and well developed thinking and reasoning skills will be essential tools for managing the unpredictable.

While a teacher may only come across an exceptionally or profoundly gifted child once or twice in their career, virtually every teacher has one or more gifted child in their class every year. Without training and support, they may not even realise they are there. They may well be seduced by opinion and remain unaware of the facts.

Regularly it seems, I become disillusioned, frustrated at the lack of progress in the area of appropriate education for gifted students. While some enlightened teachers and even some schools have made a great difference for the gifted children they encounter, I am still frequently called upon to answer the same questions and correct the same misconceptions. Parents continue to meet many of the same road blocks and misinformed decision making that first led me to learn more and begin advocating for the needs of gifted children 15 years ago. When I read articles like the one today, I wonder if any progress has been made at all.

Which is more important? What a person is now, or what they will become?

2010-10-05T16:58:00.002+08:00

It is interesting to consider the way we look at the world. When you think about it, we are not very consistent. On the one hand we don’t doubt that a young child will ‘become’ something, and learn skills they need to navigate the world (primarily reading and writing), yet we more often doubt that our teens will have what it takes to change the world.

A little while ago I read a post by Seth Godin reminding us that we would do well to look beyond teh easy path.

Here is a little of what he had to say

“It's absurd to look at a three year old toddler and say, "this kid can't read or do math or even string together a coherent paragraph. He's a dolt and he's never going to amount to anything." No, we don't say that because we know we can teach and motivate and cajole the typical kid to be able to do all of these things. Why is it okay, then, to look at a teenager and say, "this kid will never be a leader, never run a significant organization, never save a life, never inspire or create...”

He goes on to make the point that we invest much energy on 'practical' skills that prepare a person for a life of following instructions but that we (schools and community) are relentless in avoiding the more difficult work necessary to ensure a person can push through and reinvent themselves into someone who makes a difference when they need to.

When I read his final statement (see below), it was gifted kids who struggle for one reason or another to show their strengths in the classroom that first came to mind. Too often they are ‘written off’, their potential doubted, the harder road of finding opportunities to help them unlock that potential not explored.

Godin asks “And isn't it even worse to write off a person … merely because of what they are instead of what they might become?”

It's a good question.

Believing in our children

2010-09-09T22:42:00.000+08:00

Tonight I watched a fascinating TED talk by Sugata Mitra on child directed education. Concerned that there are places not only in India but in every country where good teachers can’t or won’t go, his project makes internet enabled computers available to children, then leaves them to learn. The presentation looks at children managing their own learning, how interest can overcome language barriers* and how deep learning happens when children interact with each other. He shows how children can navigate the internet to achieve educational objectives, on their own, how they create Self Organising Learning Environments (SOLEs) and how support can come from far away.

This presentation builds on Mitra’s previous TED talk which told of the “Hole in the Wall” experiment in a New Delhi slum where children played with and learned how to use a computer without supervision or formal teaching and to teach each other.

Arthur C Clarke made a salient point in the latest presentation “If children have interest, then education will happen”

*Hear about how 12 yr old Tamil speaking students taught themselves biotechnology in English, on their own.

The Three P's

2010-09-08T10:40:00.017+08:00

From time to time I come across a snippet or a quote that I store away and have gathered quite a collection of them in recent times. I posted one a few weeks ago and when I was organising some notes, decided I should try to include one regularly. They might prove to be conversation starters and I will endeavour to include one every week or so, so keep an eye out for them.

Here is the one for this week, from Napolean Hill (he was an America author)

“Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success”

Another way to understand giftedness

2010-09-02T10:27:00.000+08:00

I came across this snippet and followed it to read the rest of the story. It appears on an Irish blog which muses on gifted, talented and creative issues.

Sadly, this may be the situation that some gifted individuals find themselves in.

Just imagine, you have landed on a planet. On this planet people only eat a quarter of the food that you would normally eat. What is more, it is considered very bad form to request any more than the average helping, as this would be perceived as unnecessary and using more than a persons fair share.

The rest of this post is worth reading. It goes on to describe the need, the physical effects and the despairing realisation that things may not change.

Programs for our Gifted?........ or for our Talented???

2010-08-30T10:37:00.002+08:00

Just recently I was working in a regional area, speaking with parents and working with children. The same issues seem to arise regardless of whether I am in the city or in one of the regional or country towns I visit.

The question of whether a child will be, or should be, included in a pull-out opportunity run in the school invariably comes up in discussion.

Often the students who are selected for pull out programs or gifted extension opportunities are those who are achieving at a high level. These are talented students.

Students who have been identified as gifted but are not achieving to the level of their potential (who are by definition underachieving) are much less likely to be included in the same opportunities.

So are our gifted programs really for our gifted students or are they for our talented students?

More important than what might be right, is that we are clear about who we are making the opportunity available for. If we are actually catering for talented students, we should say so. If the opportunities are for gifted students, the type of programs that might be needed may well be different. These would likely include some students who were achieving at a high level, along with some whose potential had not been tapped as yet. These might be students who don’t put a lot on paper, whose skills are in areas that see less opportunity day to day in the regular classroom. It might include children who were still learning how to make good decisions or to choose between the multitudes of ideas or options they could envisage, or who were hands on, problem based learners.

The programs schools run often have to be developed within constraints or staffing availability or expertise. But I think it is important that even with these constraints that schools are clear in their own minds about who they are offering opportunities to. Calling it a ‘gifted program’ but only including high achievers is bound to leave both parents and gifted (but not high achieving) students somewhat disillusioned. Programs for ‘gifted’ students should include those identified but not yet achieving highly. It should also offer opportunities to gifted students with learning difficulties (twice exceptional students). But not necessarily for all these students at the same time, in the same group.

Offering a selection of programs for gifted students with strengths in non verbal domains, as well as for those with strengths in verbal and written domains will ensure that both the gifted and the talented have a chance to access opportunities to extend and enrich their learning.

Without the opportunity it is be much harder to become talented……

The problem of handwriting

2010-08-27T11:58:00.000+08:00

One of the most common reasons that parents report for their identified gifted (often highly gifted) child not being included in extension groups running at school is that their writing is not good enough / neat enough / fast enough………

While I may not advocate for including a child in a pull out writing group if they were not a ‘writer’ or didn’t at least like writing, excluding a child because their handwriting is considered poor (often meaning it is not at the level of their verbal interactions or their measured potential) may be keeping the child from an opportunity that they really would benefit from.

Of course, it may not be quite so convenient to have a student or students who don’t write with ease in this sort of group. But there are a number of ways to support them in their writing, perhaps by allowing them to type their work or to record their work for later transcription. This then allows them to work on refining their ideas, developing their writing skills without the constraint of slow or poor writing.

For young children who are just beginning to write, including them in a group where others are already writing and where they can see writing has a purpose (beyond completing pages of hand writing practice) can make all the difference.

If a child had physical disability that impacted on their writing, we would be quick to make sure they had the chance to access opportunities to develop their potential. If they are gifted but don’t write neatly, less often do parents report that supports are put in place…… No doubt that is frustrating for everyone.

Quote

2010-08-20T11:22:00.001+08:00

I thought this quote may ring true for some people

The fact that students differ may be inconvenient, but it is inescapable. Adapting to that diversity is the inevitable price of productivity, high standards, and fairness to kids. Theodore Sizer

Many ways to be gifted

2010-08-16T23:22:00.000+08:00

Recently my father in law passed away. Max was a rare man of many talents. He grew up and was educated in a small country school. His hand writing was pretty difficult to read, his spelling wasn’t great and I am pretty sure his school reports weren’t glowing with regards to his academic aptitude. Max left High school at 16 and being good with his hands, started a carpentry apprenticeship.

Max was inquisitive and went on to be highly successful, developing a wide array of skills, earning a long list of awards and accolades and making discoveries that changed our history books. By any measure he was a very smart and successful man.

But how was this if he didn’t shine at school?

Smart comes in many guises.

By practical application of his ability to look afresh at things and see the connections between ideas, Max was a discoverer and one who earned public recognition. At one point I recent times his business card declared him to be an ‘adventurer’.

He was the first man to dive on the ship wreck of the Batavia which had lain for 334 years below the sea off the Western Australian coast. By setting aside assumptions and looking with fresh eyes at the information available and then applying the information in a practical way to the world he realised that others were looking in the wrong place. (see Islands of Angry Ghosts by Hugh Edwards for more of that story).

With the same sort of thinking he co-led a small expedition to Dirk Hartog Island in January 1998 which located the French coin left by the French in 1772 along with the proclamation of possession of WA by the French. He found the information he needed to pinpoint the search location in a child’s book in the local library and the team had picked up the artifact containing the coin within 20 minutes of beginning their search. (The Museum with much greater resources had made a number of unsuccessful expeditions prior to his search).

The fresh and creative way he looked at every day problems and nutted out solutions was a real talent. Perseverance and the willingness to research thoroughly was a skill he cultivated especially when some projects extended over many years. The wisdom to know when to ignore expectations was perhaps also a valuable skill. Max was still working on some projects, in one case pursuing a theory he felt strongly convinced of, although it was contrary to popular opinion. Time will tell on that project.

Robert Sternberg’s view is that giftedness requires more than just high IQ. That Wisdom, Intelligence, Creativity and the synthesis of these traits (he refers to it as WICS) are needed. He refers to this as Applied Intelligence and his research has shown that students with this range of characteristics do far better in College than those who gain entry on IQ alone.

I would be guessing but it is quite likely that they also fare better in real life.

If you would like to find out more about the adventures of Max, you might enjoy his biography Treasures, Tragedies and Triumphs of the Batavia Coast by Max Cramer (available in some libraries and various places in and around Geraldton)

Managing without the Instruction Manual

2010-06-19T08:58:00.000+08:00

Parents with gifted children have perhaps an even more challenging journey than some other parents. The regular parenting manuals don’t provide a lot of helpful information or comfort for the parent of a baby who only naps in the day time and whose night time sleep needs are far less than others the same age, or the child who is stacking a dozen blocks in a tower at 12 months of age, or the child who is holding conversations with strangers at 18 months of age. There is no doubt that life would be more straight forward if we knew what to expect, where to turn for help or if we had something to tell us the ‘right’ way to proceed when our child threw the next challenge at us.

However parenting seems to demand that we remain flexible, that we brainstorm and analyse options, that we think creatively, problem solve and investigate options. It demands we shift from the safe mindset of a ‘Knower’ (who would have absorbed the manual) to the less certain one of a ‘Learner’ (in many ways just like our child). Young children are inveterate learners, interacting with the world around them, persisting and trying out ideas. They are investigators, questioners and problem solvers.

Perhaps then parenting is Nature’s way of making sure we remain learners, that we model the process of learning for our children. Perhaps the reason it is more challenging than we might have chosen is that life will be challenging for our children and they need us to model managing the challenges.

For them to have the best resources in order to grow into healthy, happy people who feel at home in the world and who can face what life throws at them intelligently and cheerfully, they need to see us continue to learn as well.

One of the best things we can do is to articulate the process of not knowing and how we navigate it.

Where are our gifted girls?

2010-06-05T10:20:00.011+08:00

There is essentially no difference between the degree of giftedness of girls and boys, however far more boys are identified as gifted.

The recent EXPLORE testing prompted me to look anew at the children whose parents had sought consultations with Thinking Ahead in the past 5 years or so.

Only 38% were girls.

Checking other samples in Australia and the USA, this pattern is repeated (40% girls reported by the Gifted Develpopment Centre in the USA, 42% girls reported by Fiona Smith of Gifted Minds in Australia).

Of the students who registered for the EXPLORE test this year, about 28% were girls, slightly up on last year where it was a little under 20%.

Both teachers and parents identify giftedness in boys more often than in girls. As boys are also more likely to act out their frustrations when curriculum does not meet their needs than girls, perhaps this accounts for it in part. Perhaps it is that many gifted girls choose to blend in from an early age, tend to sit still and do neat work and so slip by unnoticed. Perhaps compliance is mistaken for 'happiness' with the situation. Maybe it is just that many people still dont expect to see giftedness in girls.

It is a real shame if the 'glass ceiling' exists low enough and early enough to distract us from seeking out and encouraging our gifted girls and boys equally and providing opportunities to develop their talents and potential.

What does Happiness look like and where might we find it?

2010-06-02T23:19:00.000+08:00

Last year I mentioned that, more than high scores, the priority for the parents I speak to is for their child to happy. Indeed it is something that we want just as much for ourselves.

Since the later part of 2009 I have read a lot about happiness, looking for some clarity and perspective, hoping to come across keys that might prove enlightening. Plenty has been written about the topic and it pops up in all sorts of places. Some people have made Happiness their ‘project’, you can attend conferences or retreats where you have the opportunities to explore the idea but we are still unable to ‘bottle’ it.

Perhaps underlying everything is ‘meaning’. Happiness is associated with purpose and passion, with taking on meaningful challenges and not running away from difficulty. It has far more to do with the pursuit of non trivial challenges than having nothing to worry about. There is a feeling of energy, absorption and satisfaction that comes with it.

This sounds very much like the concept of ‘Flow’ which was first introduced to the world by Mihalyi Czikszentmihalyi in 1990, the match between skill level and degree of challenge leadign to sustained effortlessness.

Children will spend hours improving their skills or pursuing projects in areas that interest and challenge them, mastering dance steps, practicing guitar chords, practicing their joke telling or refining a computer game. These activities real, their learning is messy in imprecise and not being sure they will get it right (at least not the first time), can be disconcerting. Yet in spite of that they are ‘happy’ to do it and they feel a degree of satisfaction in their progress or success.

If this is the case, what role does school play in children’s happiness?

How often does your child feel a passion and purpose in relation to their learning at school? (is there a difference when they are learning in other settings?) How often are they engaged in challenging, non trivial (in their mind) tasks and feeling energised and satisfied with their efforts?

How much does the child’s school experience impact on their willingness to engage in real, messy disconcerting activities out of school?

Different ways of looking at what you are making

2010-05-06T13:32:00.000+08:00

This morning I came across the following story. It was used in the context of business but I think it applies nicely to many other aspects of life.

A man stopped by a building site and asked the first man what he was making.“I’m laying stones,” said the man, and went back to his work.

He moved to the second man and asked him what he was making.“About $5 per hour,” remarked the man, and got back to work.

The man came to the third man and asked him what he was making.
The man smiled, threw his arms in a wide arc and beamed, “I’m building a Cathedral!”

Life in a family of gifted people is not always straighforward and navigating a path can at times feel like a rollercoaster ride, but as often as you can, and with as much gusto as you can muster, "look up every now and again and think about what you’re making."

Hogwarts in the (Perth) HIlls

2010-04-26T22:30:00.000+08:00

I spent last weekend at Hogwarts. Well, maybe not THE Hogwarts, but the kids at the first gifted family camp in WA seemed pretty sure that was where we were and there was no mistaking the Harry Potter theme especially on the Saturday evening.

More than 40 children ranging in age from 6 to 12, along with about 20 mums, dads and a Grandma spent the weekend at Camp Woody in the hills, enjoying the chance to meet new friends and mix with like minds. Many families travelled from country areas for their kids to have the chance to attend.

During the weekend potions were dreamed up and tested, anatomy was studied, healing balm made (not strong enough unfortunately to soothe my tired feet, but certainly marvellously for scratches and bites), magical creatures were designed, owls, marauders maps and whomping willows were created, teams completed a wide range of tasks for the Challenge Cup and there was still plenty of free time to spend with new friends.

It was amazing to see how quickly the House teams came together as a group, how students who are more usually reserved relaxed their guard and got right into things and how much energy 40 gifted children can generate when they are passionately involved in things.

The camp however was not just for the kids. The parents also had plenty of time to share their stories with each other, to share what worked for them and the ways they manage the challenges of life in a gifted family and to be able to talk about topics that interested other gifted adults. Many of the parents embraced the theme of the camp, dressing up for the Saturday night and even becoming part of the concert. Many commented on the difference in their child in a setting with like minds.

I did not hear anyone claim to be bored all weekend. In fact one boy lamented the fact he hadn’t had time to complete one activity in a workshop because he had been too involved in another and asked to come back in his own in free time the next morning so he could do it then. In fact the only complaint was that we ran out of time for the planning Quidditch game on the final afternoon. That really was a shame because I was also looking forward to seeing how it could be done.

Despite many tired bodies by the end of the camp (not just the kids) their minds seemed energised. I heard from several parents over the next few days how, contrary to expectations, their kids did not sleep on the way home. Rather they recounted events, wrote spells, made plans, continued drawing maps and talked about new friends.

The comment of the weekend would have to be “Why can’t these kids be my class all the time?”

Lessons we can learn

2010-04-15T10:31:00.000+08:00

30 years ago parents of children with disabilities had a difficult job advocating for their child. Parent’s needs were not often considered and few children had the opportunity to attend schools. A great deal of time and effort went in to bringing about change.

The following points are drawn from a poster presentation at the ARACY conference in September 2009 about children with disabilities as a special needs group.

They apply almost as readily to gifted children whose needs also often fall outside the norm.

Early identification and early intervention have been shown to lead to best outcomes.
Service providers work in partnership with parents and families (and later schools) to provide them with the skills and knowledge to support and optimise their child’s development and their ability to participate in community life.
Parents often move through a number of stages including shock, confusion, anger and disbelief before they accept the diagnosis.*
At various times the parent will be an advocate, information seeker, spokesperson and public educator for their child.
Parents with a disabled child are in frantic need of formal and informal support and need thoughtful professionals who respect their feelings
Such a child impacts on parental wellbeing and functioning
Services should be child focussed and family centred.
Professionals should acknowledge and respect parent’s expertise and knowledge and help families recognise their children strengths
Professionals must respect families desire to be in control and give families the information they need to make informed decisions.
There is a further need to promote positive and collaborative partnerships, for mentoring to be available and for improved partnerships with educational institutions to increase efficacy.

(* for many parents of gifted children there is also an element of grieving for their own lost opportunities as they reflect on their own path through school).

The Balanced Diet Approach

2010-04-09T20:37:00.000+08:00

A balanced diet takes into account the essential food groups and how much is needed of each. The aim is provide the body with the right ingredients so that it can grow strong and healthy.

The world of finance follows a similar balanced approach with a healthy mix of investments for best success.

What if parents deliberately planned a ‘balanced diet’ of a range of learning opportunities for their child?

What would your essentials be? How would you balance your child’s need to develop for social and academic skills, their emotional development and their artistic or creative growth?

In which areas might the school support your child’s growth?

Which areas might be addressed at home?

Which might be best addressed through extra curricular activities (perhaps music or art lessons, or specialised sports?

It can be a useful exercise to spend some time working out what your child’s current needs are and what your conception of a healthy learning framework might look like (at this point in time). Then you can work out the areas in which the school might contribute. It is important though to remember that no school, regardless of how ‘good’ they are or how willing, can meet all the needs of the child. Getting the best outcomes needs a partnership. It is true that it can take ‘a village to raise a child’.

When you have completed the process you will have a framework for discussions with the school about the role they might plan in balancing the diet. And a road map, for the time being, of what you will take responsibility for and what extra curricular activities you might organise.

This process of reflection and review on the balance of the ‘diet’ is one that it is worth completing regularly. The plan might only have the right balance for this year (or even part of a year) but monitoring it can bring the same benefits as keeping an eye on your child’s diet.

Free Stuff

2010-03-23T23:02:00.000+08:00

While I have been moving into my office I have rediscovered a few things! Amongst these are 25 copies of a DVD which I have decided to give away. This 30 minute DVD called the The Gifted Puzzle was made in 2004 by the Australian Association for the Education of the Gifted (AEEGT) was filmed at a family camp in NSW.

This DVD covers a number of topics that will be of interest including identification, siblings, transition points and acceleration. It features parents chatting about questions and concerns and shows the positives for both parents and children of connecting with others. You also see the kids in workshops and hear their thoughts on opportunities to mix with like minds.

If you would like a copy of The Gifted Puzzle please enclose your name and postal address along with $1.10 worth of stamps (to cover the cost of the postage) inside an envelope and send to Thinking Ahead PO Box 171 Como. We will post off copies each week until the 25 are all gone (I will endeavour to update the website to let you know how many copies remain).

Tips for Raising Learners

2010-03-22T10:40:00.001+08:00

Over the last few months I have been thinking about some of the challenging (but very interesting) ideas I came across when reading a book titled ‘What’s the Point of School?” by Guy Claxton and will post more on those as the ideas distil a little more.

Towards the end of the book there is a focus on families as learning communities, acknowledging that as children do not come with an instruction manual, parents necessarily spend a lot of their time in the ‘Don’t Know’ zone. It urges parents to embrace being a Learner (rather a ‘Knower’), reminding us that it is never too late to further exercise our own ‘learning muscles’. In the process we can provide valuable role models to our children about the process of learning.

Here are the tips for a family as a learning community

Be a visible learner for your children
Involve children in adult conversations
Let them spend time with you while you are doing difficult things
Involve children in family decisions
Tell your children stories about thyo0ur learning difficulties
Encourage children to spend time with people who have interesting things to share
Don’t rush in too quickly to rescue children when they are having diff
Restrain the impulse to teach
Don’t praise too much – use interest rather than approval
Acknowledge the ‘effort’, not the ‘ability’
Make clear boundaries and maintain them
Don’t over stimulate – boredom breeds imagination
Choose multi-purpose and open ended toys
Encourage different kinds of computer use
Talk to children about the process of learning (without offering too much advice)
Watch and learn groom your children’s learning

Skills for the 21st Century

2010-03-15T22:39:00.000+08:00

There is no doubt the world is a different place now to when we were children and that different skills are needed to negotiate it. Consider the sorts of things that a child starting school now takes for granted that were undreamed of when I started school in 1966 (the list is enormous!).

Knowledge is being generated at such a pace that it is no longer possible to learn ‘everything’, nor is it possible to memorise the answers to life’s myriad of questions. Our children will grow up into a world that despite our life experiences, even we can’t imagine. They will require skills we are not yet aware of to solve problems that do not yet exist.
Change is inescapable but it also adds new dimensions to life.

How can we prepare our children for the world they will grow into?

One useful tool is the creative thinking process which provides us with tools for managing change. Building confidence in the ability to generate many and varied possibilities to paradoxes, challenges or concerns and then searching for meaningful connections between them is a way to empower kids (and adults) and build their confidence to manage change effectively.

This processes of generative thinking followed by focussing thinking work in harmony. They are the opposite sides of the same coin. Both are important, too much creative (generative) thinking can leave us drowning in divergence, with no path forward. Without it, we may not look widely enough or consider unique or original possibilities. The evaluative (focussing) thinking lets us look for patterns and underlying connections and to evaluate by criteria relevant to the problem we are trying to address.

A ‘safe’ climate is important for creativity, after all idea generation requires an element of risk taking. Deferring judgement is also critical to the flow of ideas. It is worth keeping in mind that praise is also a judgement. The challenge perhaps for our brightest students is that they may feel pressured to have the ‘right’ answer. Opportunities to come up with more than one solution or idea and to see adults talk through the process they use in decision making can be helpful.

If we are truly looking for solutions, we would also benefit from encouraging novel ideas but then cautiously sticking to more familiar and ‘safe’ ideas when we focus our thinking. Novel ideas are rarely born fully fledged and often need more development. Often they look ambitious or unlikely initially.

Of course, there is no one right way to the future and there are many opinions about which skills are most important. The World Future Society have a slightly different view.

‘The single most critical skill for the 21st Century

In this era of accelerating change, knowledge is no longer the key to a prosperous life. Foresight is the critical skill. Knowledge quickly goes out of date, but foresight enables you to navigate change, make good decisions and take action now to create a better future’

Perfectionism - is the label a 'diss' or a 'kiss'??

2010-02-18T16:00:00.001+08:00

I have to admit I stole that catchy line from Dan Pink, and while it also makes me sound like I am up to date, it makes an interesting point. Is perfectionism a problem or a plus? Well, maybe that depends.

We urge our children to do their best, we put in place complex systems of rewards from gold stars to badges of achievement and prizes, perhaps even financial incentives. On the other hand we are reminded that perfectionism can also lead to feeling frozen and blocked, and a reduction in risk taking or willingness to ‘have a go’ and that worries many of us.

So it is a problem or a plus? A diss or a kiss?

Perhaps it depends on how we think about perfectionism. Or perhaps more importantly what drives the perfectionism – whether it comes from an inner urge to strive for excellence or from an outside push to meet the standards of others.

Adaptive perfectionism can lead us to great achievements, striving to better our performance and to continual improvement. This comes from an internal desire for our own excellence.

Maladaptive perfectionism is just the opposite. It can limit us to ‘safe’ choices, the easy option and increase our stress levels rather than our satisfaction. The driver for this sort of perfectionism is thought to be external, fed by our concerns about what others might think, whether we measure up, what they may think if we make a mistake.

We acknowledge that creativity is an important part of life and learning. But creativity is messy, it involves making mistakes and taking risks. And that can make it scary for perfectionists who like to know exactly what is expected.

What can we do to encourage our children towards adaptive or positive perfectionism? Setting high standards and encouraging excellence are still important, but expecting perfection may not be productive. Praising effort and ideas rather than simply results and setting attainable goals may also help keep the balance towards the positive side.

So is perfectionism a problem or a plus? For most of us, It is a work in progress, the drivers shifting depending on our perceptions of competence and how important success is to us (and to significant others in our lives). I have a feeling that our mindset plays a more significant part in this than we might at first think (more on mindset soon).

If the idea of looking at things differently interests you, you may also be interested to listen to a short (under 3 mins) presentation by Derek Silvers called Weird, or Just Different?

There is a flip side to everything. It just depends on how you look at it

A New School Year

2010-02-17T16:13:00.001+08:00

It seemed that no sooner was Christmas over than the Back To School stock appeared in the shops (and before we were back to school, they has started promoting Easter). In our household, this year is our last Back To School and it is with some relief that it is behind us, that we know who the teachers are, what the expectations are and have an idea of what is to come.

I suspect there has been a lot of breath holding over the last few weeks particularly in families with gifted children. The start of a new school year can be a stressful time not only for a gifted child, but also for their parents. Depending on how things have gone in the past, the enthusiasm level for school can vary (for both parties). The child is waiting to see if the teacher 'gets' them, the parents are waiting to see if the teacher 'gets' gifted kids......... in some cases parents are waiting to see how long the calm lasts.

Many parents know after the first day or two how the year is likely to go. Sometimes it takes a bit longer. Sometimes kids are willing it to be good so hard that it can take a little while for the cracks to appear. They try so hard to do what is expected, to follow instructions, to get on with the other kids their age and many succeed quite well while it is new and they are refreshed. Perhaps they also have to adjust to a new school or setting.

As tiredness creeps in a little, or the novelty wears off, cracks may begin to show in the facade of all being well.

Even though it is only a few weeks into the year I have had calls from a few families where they are already under pressure. One family were being asked to relocate their child to grade level after 8 school days in a new school as the teachers didnt think he could cope with the work. It can take many sensitive children a little longer than that to adapt to a new environment, new expectations and routines......... One family were already trying to help the teacher understand that apparent lack of motivation might be turned around with something more challenging. Another were looking for some strategies to help the teacher see their child's strengths (rather than just the weaknesses), something that a previous teacher had been able to see but apparently were now invisible.

Parenting gifted children is a journey. It is hard to tell what is around the next corner, or even when you will approach a corner. It can be time intensive and at times heartbreaking and at others breath taking and joyful. Developing a positive relationship with the child's teacher and being involved when and where you can, can help to smooth the (school) bumps a little, not least because perhaps you might get to see the bumps before you hit them.

Fingers crossed that the year is a good one, or at least a step in the right direction for you and for your children.

Feeling encouraged

2010-01-13T23:07:00.001+08:00

This week I am back to being a student. I am one of 14 students taking a research methods class and, based on my experience in recent years, I did not expect to find anyone else interested in gifted students in the group. However, as we began to discuss and refine research topics of interest, 3 of us were explicitly looking at gifted students (or their families) and another touched on the area. Not a bad percentage really! One young graduate teacher had recently completed a unit in gifted education and wants to know more. So perhaps that is a sign that things are more encouraging than I might have been thinking........

Looking Forward, Looking Back

2009-12-31T21:57:00.000+08:00

The end of the year is a time when we seem more inclined to reflection, closely followed by looking to the future. As part of my reflective process I have been thinking back not only over this year but also over the last 8 years or so (years in which I have been working with gifted children and their families) and then also over the last 14 years since my oldest daughter began her formal schooling (and we first encountered the complexities of educating gifted children).

In some respects much has changed. In others, sadly it seems, very little.

Over the last 4 or 5 years I have worked with more than 250 gifted children and their families. Almost without exception these children are not only gifted but highly gifted or more. Their lives and needs are quite different in many ways. Some ‘cases’ have been straight forward, some have been challenging cases with a number of complicating factors. Every one of them is unique and every story is individual. The family setting, the age, the child’s IQ profile (where IQ test results are available), the position in the family with regard to birth order, their personality, degree of perfectionism, whether English is their first (or only) language……. The list goes on.

Many parents begin the journey as a result of ‘problems’ of some sort. Perhaps they felt there was a discrepancy between their perceptions of the child’s potential and their school achievement, perhaps there were behavioural issues or high levels of anxiety (or depression), perhaps it was the fact that their child seemed to have fewer friends at school over time or quite simply they refused to go to school. Sometimes it was suspected learning difficulties, something seemingly unrelated (to giftedness). Some parents have been genuinely shocked to find their child was gifted. Some have been relieved to learn there is something that explains things and are glad to be able to begin to piece things together and make a plan. More than a few have commented that at times they would swap the richness of life with a gifted child for the ease of life with a ‘normal’ child.

The challenges do not end with a ‘diagnosis’ of giftedness, as many of you who will read this will know! For all that it might explain, there are times when it feels like this is just the beginning of the challenges. The biggest hurdles are often with the education system.

Too often I have heard about a teacher’s defensive attitude, of parents being told the quantitative results they have (an IQ test administered under strict guidelines by a qualified psychologist) must be wrong because they don’t match what the teachers see. Many are told that their child is just immature, that they had an early start, that the others will catch up before long. Many parents still encounter resistance to the idea of acceleration despite decades of research showing it to be the most effective (but also most under utilised) option available. Many are still warned of the ‘damage’ they will do emotionally if they try it.

I have 2 daughters, one is fairly obviously gifted, with exceptional language skills, although she puts in just enough effort to get the result she wants and to this day puts her energy into self educating outside of the educational setting (even at uni). The other has had some challenges along the way and has found written output the most challenging. She is finally doing really well now that the content has finally become more complex but still finds writing enough detail is a challenge. She fills the gap with community service. In advocating for them over the years (and in trying to work out what was really going on with #2) I have heard just about all the arguments above. It turns out that none of them were true.

While all schools have had access to some professional development in the area of educating their gifted students in the form of the DEST packages of 2004 and 2006, many of the ‘arguments’ (as in a point of view that is being justified rather than being argumentative) put forward to which parents who approach a school about accessing the sorts of educational provisions that are a better match for their child’s needs makes me wonder if it made any (positive) difference at all.

In 2008 I gave a presentation at the national gifted conference in Hobart expressing my concern that as a result of a little exposure, we had perhaps created more problems – everyone now felt they ‘knew’ this gifted stuff, but still gifted kids were generally lumped together as a homogenous group. What worked for one, would work for all. Or more dangerously, what hadn’t worked for one child on one occasion, would clearly not work for anyone. I would have to say that this ‘case study of one’ approach is perhaps not quite as prevalent as it was a few years ago, but it is still worrying that those who are making decisions about a child’s life (not just their education!) only notice research that suits their thinking.

What progress then have we made then?

Recently more and more parents have been able to advocate successfully for acceleration for their child. Sometimes this has still been a difficult process, sometimes it has been against the wishes of a school (one Principal related that had she not been on long service leave at the time a particular acceleration would never have happened), but sometimes parents have encountered either an enlightened Principal or one who was prepared to listen and then check the research. One fairly small school took no less than 8 new accelerants in their new student population at the start of 2009.

During one call from a distraught parent after she had returned from a school tour (with a less than enlightened school registrar) asking if there was anyone who had been successfully accelerated, I was able to count at least 25 children I had worked with in the previous year who had been accelerated. (A recent search through my case files located no fewer than 79 students who had actually been accelerated). In all cases it has been successful, in some cases parents have said it has made the world of difference to their child, re-engaging them in learning, one parent related that she felt it has ‘saved his life’.

While I can’t yet say that every parent will find someone sympathetic in their child’s school, the likelihood does seem to be increasing. Each year a number of teachers have completed the Post Grad Certificate course at Murdoch Uni, another group have completed the CoGE course through GERRIC, a few others have continued their studies. Still others have been motivated to learn more as a result of having a highly gifted child in their classroom (and a positive relationship with the parents). Some others have been delegated by their schools. More schools have appointed a Gifted Co-ordinator, a few independent schools now have a Gifted Policy, some schools have a gifted committee, one is even looking to include parents on this committee. (We do still though have a shortage of teachers with formal qualifications in gifted education and a more thorough knowledge of the research base)

In the last couple of years, some parents have been incredibly proactive in educating themselves (and their child’s teachers), in forming networks of support and in sharing their knowledge with others. This has given new-to-gifted parents confidence and a safe place to talk about the challenges of life with gifted kids. As the number of families I see increases I am more often able to connect families with each other.

Some parents, particularly those with young children have been proactive and have sought information and assistance before there were problems. This is something that I have only really begun to see in the last 2 years and is encouraging!

Some of my best moments over the past year of working with gifted kids and their families have been the emails and calls I have had telling me how well things are going. About the kids who have truly blossomed. About the child who had never really found a friend who has ‘clicked’ with someone in a holiday program and desperately wants to maintain the contact (even though 500km separates them). About the sparkle that parents are seeing again in their child.

Perhaps the one that takes the cake this year was an email from a parents of a young boy who had to counter much resistance to accelerate her highly gifted son. The email told how the Principal had commented that observing how he had flourished, the acceleration had been a good idea after all, despite the fact she would not have allowed it if it had been up to her.

Let’s hope some of these positive changes are not to be as short lived as our New Year Resolutions tend to be.

If I could make a wish for the coming year it would be for more parents to have positive experiences like the ones above (and for the positive emails to keep flowing).

Or perhaps even better, that there was no longer any need for parents to be persistent to convince a school that their child’s needs would be better met by something other than the regular curriculum. That the child would be at the centre of decisions about their education (rather than pressure to maintain the status quo), that there would be no more mention of timetabling problems when subject acceleration is discussed, and that the emotional needs of the gifted were perhaps considered even before academic accommodations were discussed. (and no school would tell me they are already doing virtually all of what I recommended – if they had been, can someone explain to me why things were not going smoothly all along?)

Many thanks for the opportunities to share the journey with so many families this past year. It has been a privilege.

Happy New Year everyone and all the best for successfully advocating for your children.

Gifted at something doesnt mean gifted at everything.........

2009-12-19T10:00:00.006+08:00

Since I wrote the last post, Tiger Woods has been in the news again, and again it seems. It occurred to me that the way things have unfolded makes another good point.

Just because someone is gifted, doesnt mean that they are necessarily good at everything. While we might find it fairly easy to grasp that a mathematician may not also be a gifted athlete, or a talented musician may not also be a famous scientist, we may not have really thought much about whether we think gifted children (or adults) should automatically be good at making decisions.

Like learning to ride a bike, or to master using a pencil, decision making is a skill and as such takes practice. Helping your child to learn to make decisions is not always an easy task. The temptation to make them for them, so that they dont 'get it wrong' is strong, but it is never the less an important skill. There will be times when they dont make a 'good' decision, but there is plenty to be learned from the experience. As no doubt Tiger Woods is also discovering.

It depends on how you see the world.........

2009-12-13T10:00:00.000+08:00

Two Pre-Primary teachers are overheard discussing the likelihood of giftedness in young children. “Some of them seem gifted, but then they have been in child care and learning centres since they were babies” said the first teacher who doesn’t believe giftedness can be evident at such an early age. “They aren’t gifted, they are just school wise and had an early start. The others will catch up before long”.

The second teacher disagrees and is emphatic. “Gifted children think differently, learn differently and feel differently to other kids, what ever their age. It is important to make sure we consider best practice here and consider the needs of each of them accordingly.”

This is not such an unusual conversation. It could be heard in schools across the state (and perhaps the nation) and across all socio economic levels. While it is not limited to the early childhood years, this is often where it crops up most often.

Tiger Woods has been in the news recently and there is unlikely to be any argument that he is a gifted golfer. Let's consider the conversation above using him as an example.

Tiger Woods began playing golf at the age of two. At three he appeared on TV putting against Bob Hope and later that year he shot a 48 over 9 holes on a golf course in California. At the age of 5 he appeared in Golf Digest and on That’s Incredible. I don’t know much about golf but I would venture to say that the pace at which his talent developed was not typical.

It is true that not every gifted child shows such prodigious talent development but it does serve to illustrate a point. Would limiting Tiger Woods to playing golf against other 5 year olds and to attempting only age appropriate shots have been best practice for his talent development?

The parent of any gifted child will tell you life is not like the next person’s. How many parents have to comfort their 4 year old who has been moved to tears by a piece of music or the sight of a particular painting?

How many parents of 3 and 4 year olds have to intervene to save the dignity of one in a discussion about which creatures lived in which prehistoric period, or whether crocodiles can actually eat sharks (small ones of course) and whether they do occur in the same habitat?

How many parents of young children have been woken at 5 in the morning by excited cries along the lines of ‘Mum, I’ve worked it out!” when a child has suddenly made the connection between the sunshine and the falling water level in the pond?

If we fall in behind the first teacher who believes these children are just ‘school smart’ we take credit ourselves for the child’s rapid mastery of skills and the amazing intensity we might see amongst gifted preschoolers. It is a defensive position that assumes a child cannot know anything until he or she is taught it.

How much practice do you imagine it would it take before a 4 year old might be expected to complete a brand new never-seen-before70 piece jigsaw puzzle in the time his mum is outside hanging a load of washing?

And how do you explain the child who is begins walking at 9 months, the one who can hold conversations with strangers by the time they are 18 months old or one whose eye hand coordination means they are hitting a cricket ball before many children are out of nappies. Hot housing??? Just ‘School Smart’???

When I did my training as an early childhood teacher many years ago, there was a strong developmental focus in relation to skill acquisition and learning. Children do all develop at different rates and we know that not every gifted child will show precocious development nor are their talents necessarily obvious at an early age. But giftedness is not something you simply learn and consequently it shouldn't be expected to ‘even out’.

It is a qualitatively different way of being.

It's what's within us that counts

2009-12-10T09:55:00.001+08:00

We take for granted the chance to have an education through to the end of high school. The "Fifteen is too Young" campaign has managed to convince us that anything less means our future is limited.

Perhaps though it takes more than years-at-school to make the difference to our future pathways. Perhaps some of the Intrapersonal Catalysts that Francoys Gagne mentions in his Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent) might be more important than the content we cover.

Imagine living in an African village where there was no running water, no electricity and where the village is on the brink of starvation as a result of a severe drought. Imagine having to leave school because your family could not afford the annual school fees (a sum that is less than the voluntary contribution in many schools and less than the amount WA parents get back from the government when they have a child in the senior years of school).

For one young boy in Malawi this was his reality. Although he had to leave school at the age of 14 and to work on his family’s plot of land, his dream of a better future for his village and of further education did not end there. After work he went to the library and continued to read and learn. He was fascinated by science and his life changed when he found a picture of a windmill in a battered text book. seeing that the widmill could generate power, he was able to imagine a life with running water, the luxury of an electric light and see a chance to protect his village against hunger.

Like many people who step outside the normal expectations, he faced some challenges and derision not only from the community but also his family, as he scrounged from rubbish and persevered, cobbling together enough pieces to build a makeshift turbine and windmill. Over time he powered his family’s compound, began to change life in his village and inspired the world.

To continue in the face of opposition, to creatively use what was available towards and to stick with his vision shows something more valuable than he might have learned in school.

I believe there is danger in attempting to ‘normalise’ those who fall outside the ‘normal’ curve, in expecting uniformity and in setting expectations too low. I wonder if this boy would have been driven to continue to work on this project if he had continued at school. I wonder how many of our children assume that all the ‘good’ ideas have already been thought of, that there is no need to strive or feel that they must conform to have a future.

This heart warming story is a reminder to celebrate the diversity and uniqueness of our children, to encourage ingenuity and to remember that there is more to success in life than high test scores. Creativity, perseverance and volition may be under rated in some circles, but they may just be more important than almost anything else our children may take out into life with them.

If you would like to find out more about William Kamkwanda, "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind" you might like to read this article or this one (with video clip and book review) or to read his blog and see what has happened since word has spread.

How flexible is your school?

2009-12-02T09:59:00.001+08:00

Are the children grouped by age and move rigidly through the year levels? Does it allow your child to move between classes as needed depending on their strengths and skill development? Does it provide opportunities to work at the pace their need to learn at their optimum? Does it offer flexibility in start and finish times each day to fit in with parents work patterns? And flexibility about when your child takes holidays?

One Dutch primary school has taken a new approach to the organisation of the school schedules. This ‘flexible’ school operates between 8 am and 6pm each day enabling parents to drop off and pick up their children early or late depending on their work schedules. Parents can also determine the child’s holidays to suit their individual needs.

Pupils receive individually tailored study programs with each program lasting 10 weeks. The school year consists of 5 consecutive study programs and children’s progress is monitored in the usual way. The day is organised in such a way that students can ‘interchangeably play and study’ while at school.

Far from being experimental this private school has considered an organisation style that they believe suits the modern flexible world. The northern hemisphere long summer vacation is a ‘legacy from the agrarian past when farmers needed their children during harvest’ and the Director indicated she also believed that the conventional school hours of 8.30 to 3.30 did not suit children’s biological rhythms.

Other similar schools are being planned in the Netherlands. Click here for more information on this flexible school

The Dangers Indoors - or too much cotton wool....

2009-11-30T09:49:00.002+08:00

In 2008 when I visited a number of schools for gifted kids in the USA, I was surprised to find that several schools had an area of forest within their grounds as part of their play area. The children were able to build cubbies and in situ art works and to play here during breaks without the intense supervision that is routinely part of Australian school play areas.

Playgrounds or for that matter outdoor play ‘is not what it used to be’. No doubt the world has changed and bad things do happen, but a lot of opportunities for experimenting, problem solving and learning have also been lost.

What has reduced our kid’s time playing freely outdoors? Fear of accidents has tidied up our playgrounds, removing anything hat might be a potential risk, while removing opportunities for learning, problem solving (both physical and social) and wrapping our children in cotton wool. Robert Bateman, a Canadia naturalist and artist spoke at the World Gifted Conference in Vancouver in August, about the need to reconnect kids with nature. While there are real dangers that didn’t exist n the past, he believes our kids are not playing outside due to misplaced fear. Kids should play outside, they should play in groups ideally, not just for safety but for the social interaction it provides as well.

He also questioned why outdoor play these days needed to always be supervised? Is it perhaps that we feel kids can’t learn things unless we set up an environment to ‘teach’ them?

He proposed the dangers indoors were greater these days than those outdoors with unsupervised access to the internet, the frequency of TV violence and potential for cyber bullying meaning that the need for supervision indoors was much greater.

Surplus safety is cutting our kids off from nature. An Auastralian study showed it is also impacting on the phsyical and mental health of our children. An alarming snippet also appeared in a newsletter from Free Spirit Press reporting on the alarming number of US preschool aged children who lack daily access to outdoor play. And that children in the 8 – 11 age bracket can more readily identify fictional characters than real living things such as trees and birds. While the situation may be a little different in most of Australia, it is a sobering thought.

Playing outside has health, mental health and intellectual benefits. ‘Surplus safety’ increases the risk of illness, leads to reduced resilience, greater difficulty with social problem solving and in the long term, increases the risk of leading a sedentary lifestyle.

If you would like to read more about the value of playing outdoors, see if you can get hold of a copy of The Last Child in the Woods (read an excerpt). Or have a look at No Child Left Inside. Or check out the Nature Rocks website

And perhaps consider attending the KidSafe conference in April 2010 (to be held at UWA)

2009-11-29T23:28:00.000+08:00

It has been an extremely busy term and although I had a number of posts partially completed, I have battled to find time to get them tidied up and posted here. Hopefully with the holiday program almost finalised and the end of the school year in sight, I will get a few more things up posted. And perhaps even some holiday reading suggestions.

More to learn from the lives of Nobel Laureates

2009-10-15T20:25:00.000+08:00

I was searching for an article for someone today. I didn't find what I was looking for, but I did come across an article titled Nobel Laureates: Their Parents' Influence which appeared in the Parenting for High Potential magazine published by the NAGC in the USA. If you are interested to read more about the role parenting practices and the family environment can play you may like to read the article.

The Road to Eminence

2009-10-14T23:44:00.000+08:00

Our fascination with those who achieve eminence is not new. Those who have stood above the rest for a variety of reasons have been written about in history books and spoken about in traditions of oral history since time began.

Looking at the lives of such people can provide us with some insights as to the best conditions for nurturing eminence. There were a number of presentations at the World Gifted Conference earlier this year that probed the lives of eminent people and the paths they took.

Contrary to what we might expect, the majority of people who go on to achieve eminence do not show early precocity that might predict their later achievements with only around 10% showing skill at 11 or 12 years of age that would have predicted their achievements in their 20’s and beyond.

About 1 in 5 was described as being odd or eccentric as a child. The pressure on our gifted young people who are perhaps amongst this ‘fringe dwelling’ subset to ‘normalise’ may result in repressing the very characteristics that would serve them well in their futures.

Our highest achieving students are not necessarily those bound for future eminence. Valedictorians tended to go on to have well rounded and successful careers but were not the ones to change the world. Being comfortable as they were with the status quo (which is why they did well) they did not tend to be the rule breakers………..

The presence of adversity in some form was another common theme in the lives of eminent people and this proved to be catalyzing in some way. The resilience developed as a result is perhaps where its value lies. Families of eminent people were also very important with parents often opinionated and encouraging of debate. They fostered inquiring minds and creativity along with a love of learning.

They tended not to be a first born child, to have high but not necessarily the highest intelligence, to see rules as there to be broken or at least stretched, to be energetic, tenacious and discontent with the status quo. Perseverance was a strong common thread.

Another study looking at the childhood and adolescence of Nobel Laureates in science investigated was aiming to find out best to fully develop the science and innovative abilities of gifted and talented children. A common factor for them all was a GREAT teacher (not just a good one) at some point, either in school or later or who taught in a unique and exceptional way, reinforcing how critical it is for our gifted youth to be taught by the gifted and inspiring teachers.

How can we use this information to foster our young and gifted?
Perhaps by encouraging them to study the lives of eminent people, to see the role of persistence, of questioning, thinking outside the square and having a goal to work towards in defining their futures can only be helpful. Communicating the message that creativity is needed in all fields of endeavour, not just in the arts. By encouraging innovation and celebrating serendipity. Cultivating wide ranging interests is also likely to improve the chance of finding the field of endeavour that is their 'thing'. (Sir Ken Robinson has lots more to say on this subject)

Questioning the Assumptions we make about Education

2009-09-23T16:26:00.000+08:00

In searching for something today, I was reminded of a snip I had saved from an internet site (which I am not able to relocate) many, many years ago at a time I was beginning to question whether the problem might actually be me (or at least us) rather than 'the school'. A couple of years ago I wrote an article based on this snippet for the state gifted association newsletter. As it seems as relevant now as before, I have added it below.

It's often a really hard to go against everything you've grown up to believe – that schools always know what's best for kids, they have their best interests at heart, that 6 year olds belong in Year 1. But if you discover you have a gifted, highly gifted or beyond child (one family referred to theirs as PGlets), you may feel like you have landed in an alien world and the assumptions you may have lived by, just don’t work………

Amongst your reading and research, amongst the questions you will ask of those who have already walked this road, you are bound to begin to question whether the world as you thought you knew it, really reflects the truth.

Hegemony is ideology so entrenched within us that it seems to be not just what we believe in, but simply the way things naturally are. That being the case, in educational settings the participants – teachers, parents and the students – never seriously question such premises as …..

• Schools provide education and wise students take up the offer (1)
• Teachers know more about education than parents (2)
• Wise parents support (i.e. defer to) professional of all kinds (3)
• Adults know more about everything than children (4)
• Adults are more mature than children
• Children of a given age belong together (5)
• Children should always defer to adults
• Children cannot really know something unless it is formally taught and tested (6)
• Students who do well at school are gifted
• Students who do poorly at school do so because of a flaw in the child (e.g. talented but lazy) or the family (e.g. not supportive) (7)
• Childhood is a state of immaturity, ignorance and innocence (8)
• Children who dissent do so because they are immature

But if we accept these as true, how do we reconcile our child’s unique learning abilities and needs?

How do we explain how children are so much more skilled using a Game Boy than the adults in their life? In which class did they learn that? (Would their teachers pass a test in this and do better than their students?) see 4 and 6 above

How do we explain gifted children being drawn to friendships with older children and the way they can become more passionately engaged in learning with these older children? see 5 above

How do we explain to teachers that our child is capable of much more complex and abstract curriculum even though they are not achieving highly on the year level curriculum? That we know them and how they learn best? see 7 and 3 above

How do we explain the fact that children who have felt stifled, anxious or out of place in school can blossom and thrive when homeschooled, when they and their parents take charge of their learning? see 1, 2, 3, 8, above

The more we understand about giftedness, the less these assumptions seem to hold true. It is through this ‘alien’ landscape that we have to negotiate a new path, to consider what we see, to question and objectively decide what is best for our children regardless of what everyone else assumes. And this is often really hard. Becoming well informed, confident advocates for our children may not be the role we would chose, but it has been cast to us and to do this we have to step aside from what we assume and decide for ourselves what our world should be like.

Just as many children feel isolated in school, so too can their parents. So a few guidelines for you too

• Develop a support network amongst other families with gifted children where you can discuss some of these issues (without family and friends hinting that you may not be of sound mind to think this way)

• Trust yourself. You know your child better than anyone else, no-one cares about him/her more than you do. Listen to your child, watch his/her behaviour and you will know when you are on the right track. Ignore as best you can others who tell you ‘not to worry’, or to ‘stop pushing’. When all is well, the waters are smooth.

• Hang in there – you can find a way. There are always options, sometimes they just require us to ‘think outside the box’ to find them. And to trust ourselves when we do.

• Let your child be a child – the child that they are. That means as far as possible avoiding being crammed into someone’s view of how things should be. Instead letting them be free to learn and grow their own way, helping them to be a passionate, joyful individual and appreciating them for being themselves. Maybe even reading one of Richard Feynman’s lectures as a bedtime story if that is their passion.

Enjoy the ride. It can be exhausting, nerve wracking and sometimes painful, but there is nothing like watching a gifted child flourish, learning to believe in themselves and nothing like the conversations (even the ones at 4 am).

And there is nothing like a gifted child to lead you to question your assumptions……

Acceleration - pushing the child or taking the brakes off???

2009-09-21T12:26:00.001+08:00

Late last year I had a phone call from the distressed parent of a highly gifted young girl. After meeting with the family about a month before, I had recommended a grade skip and mum had visited a school where she hoped to enrol her daughter for the following year.

The person who had taken her on the tour of the school had told her that ‘pushing’ children in that way could only lead to a bad outcome and that usually children who were accelerated had to return to year level because it didn’t work. The mum wanted to know if I knew of anyone who had been accelerated and where it had been successful.

While I was talking to her I was able to check off a mental list of more than 25 children I had worked with who had been accelerated. For every one of them it had been a success. A year later, the list has probably almost doubled.

The reality of grade skipping is actually quite the opposite of what this parent was told. While it may not be the most suitable option for every gifted child, acceleration is one of the most useful but most underutilized tools for meeting the learning needs of our gifted children.

Bad outcomes? For none of the children I know who have been accelerated could it be considered a bad outcome. In some cases it may not be an exaggeration to call it ‘life saving’, certainly for many of them it has given the child back some enjoyment in school and life and parents some peace of mind. For a few it has been less obvious academically, but they are happier and generally more relaxed. For some I doubt that a single acceleration is enough but it is a start. When parents email me telling me is wonderful ‘to have their child back’, I doubt that they would consider it a ‘bad outcome’. To date I have not come across a child who had to be de-accelerated again because it didn’t work.

Pushing? Well that implies pressure of some sort, in the same way that you might have your foot on the accelerator in a car. Many of these children complain about the pace at school being too slow, many spend time waiting while for others to finish or get more practice. Some have just lost the motivation to engage in learning at school. Research has shown that stress can result from work being too easy just as readily as it does from it being too hard. The child then is already under pressure before they are accelerated. Moving the child to curriculum that better matches their learning needs in many cases removes the pressure (and the stress and frustration) and allows them to recharge and re-engage. A better analogy might be to an electric car on a downhill slope, regenerating. Or taking your foot off the brakes.

While it was common in the days of the One Teacher School, acceleration has fallen out of favour for one reason or another since then. A review of acceleration options by Karen Rogers a few years ago found that the biggest complaint accelerants had had about the experience was that they weren’t accelerated more!

Acceleration in the form of a grade skip will not necessarily be the most suitable option for every gifted child, but it can make the world of difference. From amongst the many stories and emails from parents, one very gifted young boy comes to mind. He had become a 'behaviour problem' in the classroom and his teacher felt sure he had ADHD. I had an email from his mother a few months after he was accelerated to tell me he was a 'different boy', he completed his work, was not a problem at all in his new class, rather he was a model student! And, perhaps more importantly, he had finally found a friend.

Schools across all 3 education systems in WA have accelerated students in recent years, probably more in the last few years than in the decade or two before that. And as they have seen these accelerated kids blossoming, they have perhaps become a little less nervous about it and it has been an achievable option for more students. One school this year enrolled 8 new students all of whom were grade skipped and they joined a number of other accelerated students already in the school.

I keep hoping that the days of a child being denied a grade skip because the person making the decision knew someone years ago who was accelerated and it 'didn't end well' - the classic Case Study of One - are coming to an end. Hopefully I wont have other parents calling me with the same concerns of the mum I mentioned and that schools will increasingly be happier to take the brakes off their brightest young students.

If you are interested to read more about acceleration, you might like some of the following:
A Nation Deceived
Acceleration - What we do vs What we Know
A Best Evidence Synthesis on Research for Acceleration Options for Gifted Students
Guidelines for Acceleration

I'm Bored!

2009-09-10T09:55:00.000+08:00

I came across the quote below quite by chance. While it isn't specifically referring to gifted children, I am sure the parent of any gifted child (and probably many other children as well for that matter) has heard the lament that something or other is 'boring'. Sadly, I have heard some people who perhaps should know better espouse the view that no child could know what 'boring' means, it must be something they 'overheard'. While a certain tolerance for boredom is probably necessary, after all life necessarily includes some boring bits, perhaps this quote might offer another perspective on where "I'm bored" might lead, at least in relation to school.

“Boredom will always remain the greatest enemy of school disciplines. If we remember that children are bored, not only when they don’t happen to be interested in the subject or when the teacher doesn’t make it interesting, but also when certain working conditions are out of focus with their basic needs, then we can realize what a great contributor to discipline problems boredom really is. Research has shown that boredom is closely related to frustration and that the effect of too much frustration is invariably irritability, withdrawal, rebellious opposition or aggressive rejection of the whole show.” Fritz Redl in When we Deal with Children 1967

The Art of (Maths) Problem Solving

2009-09-09T09:06:00.001+08:00

Last night in conversation I heard someone saying that being a 'geek' is the new 'cool'. Then the guys who put together this site must be very cool. The Art of Problem Solving is a maths website with online classes designed for high-performing math students in grades 5-12. They have a number of courses starting at various times from September 2009 onwards (in line with the northern hemisphere school year, they are based in the US) that might be of interest to maths students here. Some of the courses are free, some are not too cheap but they cover a range of topics including algebra, counting and probability, pre-calculus and calculus as well as problem solving.

There is also a 7 month course Olympiad preparation and testing program called WOOT (WOOT stands for Worldwide Online Olympiad Training) that brings together many of the best students from around the world to learn Olympiad problem solving skills.

If you know someone who loves maths or are looking for some maths opportunities beyond what might be available at school, you might like to have a look at their website at Art of Problem Solving

New Ideas

2009-09-08T14:09:00.001+08:00

In the last month I have attended a couple of conferences, the first in Vancouver, the other just last week in Melbourne. I have come back with plenty of thoughts and new ideas to share. At the moment I am trying to distill some bits and pieces into common themes and as soon as I have done that I will be adding bits and pieces here.

How do our gifted students stack up in a bigger pool?

2009-08-31T09:42:00.004+08:00

Many gifted children don't have the chance to really stretch their wings in primary school. Taking an above level test can help identify strengths that might not be seen in the regular classroom ore with year level achievement testing. By raising the ceiling, students, parents and teachers can all gain valuable insight into a child's capabilities.

On my travels last year I visited the Centre for Talent Development at Northwestern University just north of Chicago in Illinois and later in the year began talking to them about the possibility of offering the EXPLORE test as a Talent Search to gifted students in Perth. There was currently no other similar opportunity available and I knew from the experience of my daughter when we sat a similar test nearly 10 years ago that it can not only be an affirming experience but also provide valuable information about what the child can actually do with the right opportunities in front of them.

The EXPLORE test is used across the USA at high school entry (at 13 – 14 yrs of age). The same test is also used as a Talent Search opportunity and thousands of gifted students in Yr 3 – 6 sit the test in the USA each year. The EXPLORE test consists of 4 parts – English, Maths, Reading and Science and students take these 4 tests one after the other during a 3 hour test session.

After many emails back and forth testing was set for early June 2009 and 51 students from Year 4, 5 and 6 in WA took part. Another 12 had wanted to but couldn’t be accommodated in the pilot program this year.

To qualify to take the EXPLORE test as a Talent Search, the WA students needed to fall within the top 5% of students their age either in terms of potential (as measured by some form of IQ test) or performance (in dicated by school achievement) and currently be in Year 4, 5 or 6.

Despite giftedness being evenly distributed between the genders, the ratio amongst the WA students registering for the test was slightly more than 4 boys to every girl. They came from across all three education sectors and across the year levels, with 20 Year 6’s, 23 students from Yr 5 and 8 students from Yr 4. The vast majority of the students lived in the metro area, 6 travelled from regional centres and 5 from rural areas to take the test.

So how did our students go? Very well as it happens!
The students receive 2 sets of results; the first compares their performance to the 13-14 year olds who take the test at the usual age. These results will show just how far beyond their year level they may be capable of working. The youngest WA boy who sat the test was just over 8 ½ - about 5 years younger than those the test was designed for! The oldest, at few months short of 12, still took the test more than a year earlier than usual.

Our top students scored at a level equal to the strongest 8th Grade students in Science, within the top 1% of 8th Graders in Reading and English and within the top 5% of the 8th Graders in Maths. These are outstanding scores! While younger students scored a little lower compared to the 8th Grade students (although not much in some cases) not one of these students ‘failed’ this test as it tested content they had not been ‘taught’ in school (but clearly knew already!) – even the weakest scores were achieved on content above year level.

The second set of results the students receive compares their performance to all the other gifted students in the same school year level who also took the test as a Talent Search. Our students also compared very favourably with their USA counterparts, scoring at similar levels to the other gifted youngsters in the same year level who also took the test

The top students in Yr 6 scored within the top 1 - 2 % of the group in English and Reading, within the top 4% in maths and at the 100th percentile (highest possible score) in Science. The Yr 4 group proved particularly strong, scoring more highly compared to their USA counterparts than the Yr 5 group did in all areas with the exception science.

As part of the preparation for testing, the students had provided some background information about their interests, aspirations and current educational setting.

Around half of the participants in each Year level had been accelerated. Around three quarters of each Year level were participating in some sort of gifted program at school. Only 5 of the students had not been accelerated and did not have access to programs for gifted students either because they were not available or they had not been selected for them.

Would these opportunities make a difference? Research suggests that a match between the level of the curriculum and the student’s needs is one of the important factors for optimal performance for gifted kids.

Six of the 8 of the highest scoring students in the Yr 6 group and 5 of the top 8 Yr 5’s had been accelerated and were part of extension or enrichment programs for gifted students. A similar picture emerged with the Yr 4 students with 2 of the top 4 having been accelerated and all participating in extension programs of various sorts at school.

So a closer match between curriculum and readiness may indeed have been beneficial. But as the results for these highly capable young people show, they are capable of much, much more than is being asked of them even with these opportunities.

Others are also musing about our education system and traditional career paths

2009-08-24T15:12:00.009+08:00

It is starting to sound repetitive. Today in my inbox was a link to an article about Gen Y and Entrepreneurship and another comment about how successfully our schools prepare our young people for their future. In part it said

The traditional career path doesn’t work for a lot of Gen Ys because our current education system is not geared to adequately prepare us for a career in the 21st century.

The full article (dated Aug 24th 2009) can be seen here. It urges young people to be proactive, to think outside the walls. It also emphasises making connections, finding mentors, getting real world experience of what interests you.

Making change in any system is a slow process. Chagens in education possibly come even more slowly - everyone has an opinion because it is something that virtually all of us have experience of.

Making change at the individual level is much easier. I think that it can only be helpful if we encourage our young people and especially our gifted to foster a mindset of being proactive about their learning, seeking out opportunities even if they aren't available in the school setting.

It is attitude that makes all the difference.

Life is like a bowl of spaghetti..........

2009-08-23T11:12:00.003+08:00

A friend of mine commented in an email the other day that he was fascinated by the study backgrounds of people and where their winding career paths took them.

My oldest daughter is currently wondering whether the path she chose is the one for her. My youngest is wondering which path to choose.

I am sure that one thing will lead to another, that new fields and interests will unfold in front of them and that in their lifetime, like most people their age, they will embark on a number of different paths. Sometimes the connection between them might be obvious, at other times less so.

Making the initial choice is often more complex for gifted young people especially those with talents in more than one area. Some are left feeling that choosing one means they will have to ‘give up’ another passion. I recall the young man who spoke at the Curriculum Council Awards presentation in early 2008 telling us he decided to study engineering and music for this very reason. Sometimes one interest or talent is more easily maintained outside of ‘work’ than another, sometimes not.

We know that many of our gifted youngsters start grappling with career choices much earlier than their age peers. Whether career guidance is available at the time it is needed or not, does school help kids find their way to the first of their steps in the wider world?

Perhaps for those who are shining academically some choices may seem obvious starting points. But what about those creative individuals whose talent areas aren’t part of daily life at school? And what about the ones whose interests remain hidden or undiscovered because the curriculum doesn’t touch on them? I am fairly sure that my daughter’s interest in philosophy remained hidden from all but one of her teachers during her school years.

The world is changing rapidly, the skills that are currently or previously useful are likely to become less important over time. The careers that have been considered prestigious may not remain that way.

When my oldest daughter started school we were told that 80% of the careers that kids her age would enter did not currently exist. How then, we wondered, would school prepare her for life? In the last 15 years or so, things have escalated further. While we accept that working in the same field (or with the same employer) for 25 years is unlikely these days, many of us still struggle with the idea that our young people will change not only jobs but career areas a number of times in their working lives.

So how can we help prepare our young people for a life we can’t imagine?
No-one knows for sure, but a few ideas that might be beneficial include exposing them to a wide rang of experiences, nurturing not only the skills to master content but also those to make connections, encouraging creativity, looking for more than one answer, making critical (evaluative) thinking part of every day, learning about the lives of others (in the past as well as in other places), teaching and modelling flexibility……….

And perhaps the hardest thing of all as parents (who grew up when the world was a different place) – encourage them to pursue their passions without knowing what the outcome will be………….

I am sure the parents of the young lady mentioned in my friend’s blog last week (Putting an Arts Degree to good use) would have had the same concerns.

What is it that parents want for their gifted child?

2009-08-19T22:10:00.005+08:00

Over the last few years I have worked with several hundred families with gifted children. Every child is different and the unique mix of family values, personality and level of giftedness means that no two stories are ever the same. However there is a common element to every story. The thing that every parent with a gifted child wants is that they are happy.......

Not one parent has come to see me with the aim of their child being the highest scoring student in the exams that will signify the end of their schoool career. While many want their child to be able to develop the potential and talents they have and to thrive in a learning environment, stellar achievement is not their prime goal.

Happiness is an elusive thing. Exactly what that means varies from family to family but what parents are looking for is usually wanting to see their child in as close to their 'natural' state as they can, bubbling and excited about the world, with the sparkle in their eyes. Often what they describe is a child more like the one they saw in the years before they entered the school system- relaxed in the world they are part of, believing in themselves, connecting with others.

Is this really any different to what any parent wants for their child? I doubt it. Why then do so many of these parents tell of feeling embarrased that this is their wish for their child?

When gifted children or gifted families get together and can enjoy the chance to relax, to share the highs and lows, the rewards and the daily challenges, the benefits are obvious. Seeing a child run to greet someone they met and instantly 'clicked' with during a previous workshop is a wonderful thing. Hearing parents sharing their stories and visibly relaxing is just as great.

Hopefully in those moments they can take a few steps down their individual paths towards 'happiness'.