Modifying Regular Classroom Curriculum for Gifted and Talented Students

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 The article, Modifying Regular Classroom Curriculum for Gifted and Talented Students, emphasizes the fact that gifted and talented students should learn something every day.   It goes on to mention general strategies for modifying the curriculum.  Those include, meeting the learning ability of the students, meeting the students’ rapid rates of learning and providing time so students can follow other areas of special interest.  This could be accomplished three ways.  An instructor could modify lessons, modify assignments, or modify scheduling.  To modify a lesson, an instructor could ask open-ended questions or higher-order thinking questions.  The article also suggested to use Bloom’s taxonomy of the six different levels of thinking.  Those include, knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, evaluation, and synthesis.  Another way is to modify assignments.  This could be done through compacting, which means, allowing students to reduce/skip the regular assignment in order to do independent project or alternate assignments; or cluster grouping of high-ability students could meet the needs of gifted students.  

Today’s classroom of gifted and talented students could implement these strategies to improve student engagement and achievement.  Many teachers most likely are incorporating some, if not all of these teaching strategies. For instance, planning for and asking higher order questions is a common practice among my colleagues. These open-ended questions allow for deeper thinking and application of material learned.  Clustering of students also occurs in many classrooms.  This grouping of high-ability students provides a different challenge for the instructors since abilities are alike, but learning styles may differ.  Instructors may use heterogeneous pairings or groupings to allow students to learn from one another.