Gifted Students - The Early Finishers

Gifted students are often overlooked. We cannot let these students get lost in the crowd of a class. I was surprised to hear from the videos that students are often thought of as having social disorders. Some students are told they have ADD, when in fact they are bored! It can be very hurtful to a student to be labeled as having some sort of disorder, when they are quite the opposite. These students are bored with what is going on and may not have the best social skills, but there is nothing wrong with them. 

I can't say that I am surprised to hear that it is common for gifted students to have only 1 or 2 close friends, but hearing it aloud in these videos really cemented the idea for me. I see this every day with one of my own gifted students. He struggles to have close relationships and is bored with our class. He chooses not to do group activities because he does not work well with other students. He is a very nice kid and he has good intentions, but he has gone through the school system being ahead of most students and having to work alone because of it for so long, he struggles to work with others not that he is in 11th grade. Other teachers say that he is just lazy, but I do not think that is the underlying reason why he chooses not to participate in certain class activities.

Using technology in our classroom has been great for the above mentioned student. We often use goformative.com for formative assessments in our classes. The students complete short assignments on their own, which is what has been best for our gifted students. Other technology tools that can be utilized in the classroom and effective for gifted students can be Google Docs. A teacher can create differentiated documents to share with certain students. Students at various levels can receive specific work/tasks/documents at their levels. Since you can share documents with select students, no one would really know who got what documents. This is beside the fact that it is high school and word travels fast :). 

Allowing students to use technology also allows them to work at their own pace, and in this case they may get ahead of schedule. Using PBS Learning Media's Website, students can create storyboards for a variety of reasons. In science, they can use them to explain processes, show relationships, and create graphical representations. This gives students a lot of freedom and allows those gifted students to use their full potential on different projects. If they happen to finish early, teachers can also create puzzles on this website. These can be done for extra credit, homework, or as a time filler for a student who finishes early.