Skip to main content

End of year thoughts

The end of the school year brings with it tiredness, relief, amazement at how we all survived, and time to draw breath, perhaps some time for some unforced critical reflection. The recent PISA results and the ensuing and no doubt ongoing debate also forces some critical thinking. I'm interested at the moment in how we organise the children in our care to optimise our time & energy for their learning -aka grouping. Ability or interest? Fixed or changing? Self or teacher determined? Some, all or none of the time?

I have been particularly interested in watching the social & emotional responses to grouping... Here's an example... Highly able, albeit somewhat reticent reader, in mixed ability reading group, feels like an outlier (uncomfortably so) but at the same time begins to express doubts about own reading ability, & therefore becomes reluctant to outwardly participate ie share ideas in discussion. Teacher assumes this lack of verbal participation is a significant lack of understanding so when re-grouping the class acts on this feeling in lieu of other data & in a return to ability grouping re-groups child at a lower level, confirming child's doubts.

This example highlights some concerns & possible ways to address these:
- grouping is a powerful instructional & organisational tool to be wielded with care
- consider who benefits most/least from grouping arrangements, as the purpose of a small group is surely to more tightly cater for collective learning needs
- outliers are more likely to need 'different' arrangement of instruction to meet their needs
- quality information should underpin decisions about grouping; frequent and on-going monitoring is essential
- both intellectual and socio-emotional outcomes need to be considered as these are closely related
- consider the benefits of specifically teaching children how to self-group, and be prepared to guid their efforts in understanding their own needs
- where you are expecting children to collaborate within a grouped learning setting, ensure they have (or are specifically taught) the skills to do this
- on a related theme, introverted children (representing perhaps 80% of gifted children) may be less able &/or less willing to participate in a collaborative task; consider how you can facilitate their learning on their terms

Happy thinking!


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Like-mindedness...inclusion...and us.

Associate Professor Tracy Riley’s recent research, shared in a SENG article, Thinking Along the Same Lines , and to be further explored at the upcoming NZAGC conference , puts like-mindedness in the spotlight. Like-mindedness is an important part of gifted education. The benefits of grouping gifted children together, creating like-minded environments, are both intellectual and social. Intellectually, like-minded students can work together at a faster pace, in greater depth, can challenge and question each other in order to bolster their individual and collective learning. Research by Adams-Byers, Whitsell and Moon (2004) found that gifted students saw the academic advantages in learning with like-minded peers as being challenge, fast pace, quality and depth of discussion, and lack of repetition of content.  Sandra Kaplan highlights that in like-minded groups, students can share perspectives and ideas that can be more readily understood, without the need for protracted explanati

Myth....busted

There are so many myths about giftedness out there. Some are factually incorrect, some are just silly, some can be easily brushed off, but some can be hurtful and confusing for gifted kids and their families. I asked my MindPlus classes what, if any, myths about giftedness they had heard, how these myths affected them, and what they think in response to myths. Buckle up, here we go... - gifted kids are walking calculators ( go on, give us a hard maths problem, NOT!... not all gifted kids are into maths, and even those who really are don't so much like solving equations on the spot) - gifted kids know everything ( everything???.... really???....what does 'knowing everything' even mean? It just isn't possible to know 'everything' and it's not fair to expect something impossible from gifted kids ) - gifted kids have an advantage over everyone else (nope, we don't, some gifted kids learn faster and more easily than other kids, but not all, but som

I believe...

Gifted Awareness Week 2019 is all about myth-busting and I am happy to blog my thoughts again in celebration of this auspicious week and this fascinating theme. What a great opportunity we, those of us in the gifted education community, have to highlight myths and truths about gifted learners, giftedness and gifted education. The difficulty I have is where to start with this? There are SO MANY myths about gifted learners. If you hop on over to Myth-Busted you can read about the myths that gifted students say they are contending with every day, and what they think about these myths. For me, as a teacher of gifted students, as a parent of gifted kids, as a gifted adult, the one, all-encompassing, over-arching, epic mother-ship of a myth that I want BUSTED once and for all is anything that starts with this: This seemingly innocuous phrase is often put at the front of mythical statements like: - I believe every child is gifted - I believe giftedness represents