One question I have about the Gifted chapter is when grouping students by ability, how can you prevent the gifted students from knowing they are more gifted than other students? I think this could go to their heads and sometimes even work backwards because if they are constantly told they are "gifted," then they might slack off and think it's acceptable to put in minimal effort just because they're "gifted."
Creativity is a form of higher order thinking because you think about something in more ways than one. Creativity involves more than just remembering or understanding (lower order thinking). It involves analysis, evaluation, and creation (higher order thinking). Lower order thinking requires no creativity, but higher order thinking does.
I think creativity is important in the classroom, and I can stress it in multiple ways. I can allow students to create any kind of project they would like to show they understand the material instead of giving them an exam. It is also important to make the classroom a community in which mistakes are acceptable, because if a student doesn't feel comfortable sharing answers, he or she will never share creative answers.
In math, a student can use creativity by solving a problem in a different way than has been taught. For example, some teachers might teach subtraction as strictly memorization of facts, but to assess students' creativity you could challenge them to think of subtraction as the opposite of addition. For example, instead of memorizing the fact 4-2=2, students can think about the same problem as 2+?=4.
I think that it is difficult for students to not know if they are in a gifted group or even regular and slower academic group. Teachers can try to group students in a way that they would not recognize, but after time students start to recognize the ability of their own group and of other groups. I agree that being "gifted" could go to a student's head in a negative way, but I also do think that in some cases, students might even be more motivated to try harder because they are in a more "gifted" group. It depends on the student and as much as teachers want to avoid having students recognize that they are in a specific group, it may not always be the case.
ReplyDeleteI think that no matter what situation a gifted child is in they are going to realize that their thinking is different than other students. Also, if you don't give them more challenging work they will be more likely to slack off and cause problems. I think that is is important to keep gifter children in groups with other gifted children because they are on the same academic level. It's always a possibility that gifted children could think that they are better than everyone, but I think if you keep them more separated this wouldn't happen.
ReplyDeleteI think that this is a common question that teachers ask. I think it is important for teachers to explain to their students that different people are gifted at different things and to emphasize that academic gifting is no greater than any other giftedness. Having more heterogeneous groups during lunch or specials could help the divide to lessen between students.
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