Gifted Learners In K-6: How To Keep Them Challenged

I invested much time at home in both of my daughter’s preschool years to help them develop literacy and numeracy skills, which I believe resulted in them being labelled as “gifted and talented” in their elementary years. However, the way this new program was designed was flawed.

My girls were taken from their classrooms to join other gifted students in a separate room to engage in higher-level learning activities. When they returned to their regular classrooms they were quietly ostracized by their peers.

This continued to the point that my youngest daughter started to respond to academic tasks in an “average” manner just so her friends would not think she was “smarter” than they.

Parents who invest time in developing their child’s literacy and numeracy skills at home prior to their child entering the formal school system undoubtedly give their child an academic advantage. But sadly, there are fewer and fewer parents who make this investment.

On paper, a teacher is assigned to teach in a Grade 2 classroom, but in reality, that same teacher is teaching students across four grade levels. The gifted students are the ones who get left out because they “already get it.”

Instead of pulling students out of the classroom to meet their learning needs, the label “inclusion” was created to save money on hiring educational assistants in the classroom.

It is not uncommon for this Grade 2 teacher to have 25+ children, 12 of whom require an IPP (Individualized Program Plan) to address their academic, social, emotional, and/or behavioural needs, and no physical educational assistant present.

The only way to receive an educational assistant in the classroom today is to have a level 4 student who requires one-on-one assistance and intervention therefore leaving no extra time or room for this educational assistant to help the 12 students of varying degrees of specialized learning needs.

So… what is the solution?

After experiencing the pull-out version of the original “talented and gifted” program, I considered a more effective alternative for my students. Highly effective students do not want to be viewed as “different” from their peers, yet at the same time, they do not want to be bored in class.

Keep them in the classroom and offer further academic challenges (digital or non-digital) such as designing and creating a poster on a topic of their choice, higher-level math learning activities, and/or starting their own blog to share with friends and family for comment.

When these students have completed their expected regular classwork, they can enjoy a sense of freedom and independent learning from a variety of choices within the classroom.

This becomes a win-win-win situation for the class, the gifted student and the teacher.

The teacher now has time to work with the 12 students who need the extra support while the rest of the class completes the expected learning activity and then transitions to their choice of independent learning.

This type of flexible classroom learning encourages their peers to further apply themselves so that they too may be afforded the same opportunities in the future.

Regardless of if you are a teacher or parent, if you would like to keep your gifted learner challenged, consider having them try different learning activities that are above their current grade level in our K-6 Learning Library!

Thank you for reading this blog post on how to keep gifted learners in K-6 challenged.

The lesson plans in our K-6 Learning Library will help you and your child or students right now and for years to come. The best part is you can edit these resources so that your child or students can focus on what they can do right now and build on it rather than internalize that they are not performing at grade level.