Skip to main content

Colourful and complex... students' thoughts about like-mindedness


Working (effectively) with like-minded peers is an essential element of the MindPlus programme. But what do children actually think and say about working with their like-minded peers?... I asked two classes of gifted children and here are their responses:

Learning with like-minded peers…
-          It’s easier because we don’t have to explain ourselves or our ideas
-          It’s not as hard as working with non-like-minded peers
-          We can work together on the same things, or on different things in the same ways
-          We can help each other learn
-          You can understand each other
-          We can learn from each other
-          It’s just easier to work with like-minded peeps

     Communicating with like-minded peers…
-          We don’t have to tackle ‘what does that mean?’
-          You can really properly listen to and think about other people’s ideas
-          It’s waaay easier to communicate

Connecting with like-minded peers… (socially and emotionally)
-          We ‘get’ each other
-          You can connect with others
-          We go through similar things
-          It’s interesting to be able to talk to people who are like you
-          You learn better social skills from being with people who are more similar than different
-          You can understand what other people are feeling, and they can understand what you are feeling


And in summary, it’s a colourful and complex experience.
Find other #NZGAW Blog Tour posts at http://giftededucation.ultranet.school.nz/WebSpace/1286/.









Comments

  1. Mary St George10 June 2015 at 21:23

    Thank you all so much for contributing to the blog tour! I loved your ideas, and think you expressed the importance of working with like-minded people well. Keep up the good work :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Andrologist18 February 2019 at 08:16

    Please believe me if I need you as I do!
    ------------
    دعامة القضيب

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

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
5 comments
Read more

The Diverse Doctor

In the weeks and months leading up to Gifted Awareness Week this year, I've been immersing myself in a new fandom, that of Doctor Who. I've enjoyed (thanks to Netflix) the different regenerations of the Doctor, his various companions, his adventures and travels and troubles, and mostly I've enjoyed his musings about life and humanity. So merging my new interest (obsession?) with Gifted Awareness Week I thought it apt to look at lessons about diversity from Doctor Who and think about how these might apply to the very real context of gifted education in New Zealand. Lessons in diversity from Doctor Who: Image credit: Flickr user: Doctor Who Spoilers , licensed for use CC BY 2.0 - an awareness that life exists in many variations The Doctor takes many forms. He understands, at the most fundamental level, that he himself is the very embodiment of diversity. From this understanding, he is then aware, from his travels in time and space, that life takes many forms. Some lif
1 comment
Read more