Sonia White

Designing Defensible Classroom Programs for Gifted Secondary School Learners: a Handbook for Teachers Sonia White

This handbook for middle schools and secondary schools (high schools) will assist teachers, departments or faculty groups and school management to focus upon their planning and provisions for gifted learners. It provides opportunities to measure current practice against best practice for gifted, and for teachers to ask: "What are we doing right?" "What's missing?" and "What can we do better?" Each section includes teacher reflection activities and checklists, so that reflective practice can be planned, trialled and evaluated through teacher inquiry.  The contents include: 

•  Developing your vision by creating a Gifted Graduate Profile 
• The characteristics of gifted learners 
• Curriculum delivery and classroom practice: gifted learners' voices and the most effective options for gifted learners from the research 
• The DPI Model for gifted learners: Differentiating, personalising and individualising learning, with practical examples and ways of implementing them 
• Other gifted education models which differentiate learning 
• Curriculum development for gifted learners in the classroom - essential elements in unit overviews and unit content 
• A rich range of classroom tools and strategies for teachers with practical examples for teachers to trial, including an adapted Blooms taxonomy model, Tony Ryan's Thinker's Keys, Eberle's SCAMPER, Socratic Questioning, Lipman's Caring Thinking, and Williams Taxonomy. 
• Classroom management techniques and a wealth of ideas of how to use the tools and strategies provided in assessment, teaching practice and raising student thinking to a sophisticated level... and much, much more. 

 Best practice for gifted brings added value to all classrooms and is valuable for all teachers. Not only will understanding best practice for gifted learners raise the bar for this group of learners, it will influence the way teachers facilitate learning for all students. Catering for gifted is not about provisions for an elite few. There are a far greater number of gifted students than many teachers realize. These often sit within the comfort zone of the main cohort and underachieve for a variety of reasons. A focus upon identifying potential as well as high achievers, and upon providing an appropriate level of challenge can result in a real increase in student achievement.