Madelaine's Ideas

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

Celebrate Gifted Aotearoa NZ: Catalysts of Success is a great theme for Gifted Awareness Week 2018. It's positive, hopeful, reflective and fun!  This theme combines some interesting ideas, and I asked my   MindPlus  classes (one-day-a-week specialist programme for gifted learners, part of the  New Zealand Centre for Gifted Education ) what they thought about this theme for Gifted Awareness Week .  So here come some ideas from the horses' mouths...  Firstly,  celebrating .  Gifted Awareness Week is indeed a week of celebration for those of us who are connected to gifted education, as learners, parents, teachers, or as interested parties. It gives us all of a specific time and reason to recognise and feel proud of our gifted learners. Having this specific time helps us to get past some of the reasons why gifted learners (and perhaps also their parents) can be reluctant to celebrate their success.  Here are some of the things my students said:  ⁃ “Sometimes my suc

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

Not long ago in my MindPlus class, we were talking about being gifted and what that means for us. Instead of talking, one student quietly wrote on a post-it ‘I don’t really feel like I fit in at school’ and stuck it on the wall. This innocuous little post-it kick-started a torrent of ‘me too’ comments and we talked at length about this meant. Whilst fitting in is not the same as a sense of belonging, the two can go hand-in-hand. Children talked about not feeling 'right', not fitting with others, being misunderstood, being different, not being able to be themselves, and not meeting others like them as factors that contributed towards their sense of not belonging.  As a teacher, a parent, and a human, I felt devastated for these young people carrying the burden of not fitting in, not feeling part of things, not belonging.   I wondered what it was that made them feel so ill at ease?   I wondered w hat steps we could take to enhance belonging in our classrooms? Some

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

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 lik