Customer Reviews

Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom: Strategies and Techniques Every Teacher Can Use to Meet the Academic Needs of the Gifted and Talented

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a classic. It is a very good "how to" book for teachers. It is full of practical information and examples that teachers can use in their classroom. It is an excellent book for parents to use to advocate for gifted education with their teachers and in their school districts. The techniques are very low cost and easy to understand. A must read and must have!

This book is a "how to" guide for modifying curriculum for gifted elementary and middle school students in the regular classroom. It is full of time saving forms and ideas for classroom teachers. It also describes real scenerios with gifted kids that will help inform the regular teacher of some of the gifted child characteristics.. For example, gifted children are less likely to have high grades and more likely to be a behavior problem than a bright child. This is a good inexpensive resource every teacher should possess. I purchased it as a parent and then shared it with the classroom teacher each year.

This is a much revised and expanded version (from 161 pages to 243 pages now), with many more master pages for reproduction. The Table of Contents gives a more detailed listing of topics. References and Resources are more extensive. Chapter 1 gives longer lists of characteristics of the gifted child, and also of the perfectionistic, creative and the twice-exceptional (giftedness coexisting with a learning challenge or a disability, such as ADD/ADHD, Asperger's Syndrome).

Gifted students tend to learn less in the regular class and are often underachievers. This book provides resource materials for a wide range of subjects for helping them to "compact" the curriculum (cut out what is redundant to each) and form flexible groupings so that individual needs can be attended to. It is based on accumulated fruitful applications and it should be a standarad reference for all teachers. (Part of the content could be for American use only.)

I've found that having my own copy of this book is invaluable, as it helps me understand where the teacher might be coming from and discuss with her what options might work well for my (highly gifted) children. I gave a copy to my son's teacher--and she uses it so much she can't share it with the other teachers. I suggested the school librarian purchase a copy, and it's in high demand--it keeps disappearing. Many teachers are more than willing to find ways to accomodate the special needs of gifted children, and are actually looking for guidance on how to best differentiate their curriculum. This book gives them many different tools, and guidance on how to use them.

If you are reading this review, I suspect that you are a teacher. If you are a teacher, you need this book! Every classroom has at least ONE gifted child; one child who finishes his or her work first, goes to a center and blasts through the work there, with ease. I found that the best thing to do with a student like this is to let him or her pick a project that he or she would like to do (example projects are listed in this book). The student then creates and agrees to the terms of the project: for example, he or she may want to read a particular book, create a painting regarding one of the characters, and then present this work to the class. The student would have to adhere to the given timeline, and would have to complete all aspects of the project--knowing that this project will be a part of his or her report card grade (in whatever subject the work is related to).

The terrific thing about this book is that it has created a very do-able, curriculum oriented outline of projects and contracts that gifted students can achieve during a marking period. Sample contracts, as well as copies of contracts that can be Xeroxed are provided.

I used this book every year I taught, and my principal was qutie happy with the fact that the projects were so curriculum friendly.

If you teach elementary-grammar school, you need this book!

Full of practical, reproducible material for teachers of gifted kids. Lots of advice and ideas regarding common gifted curriculum strategies like compacting, learning contracts, differentiation, independent study, and cluster grouping. Directly answers questions teachers (and parents) of the gifted ask most. Highly recommended... a great resource!

I'm a G/T pull out teacher at a small school and I have really enjoyed the tools this book offers. I needed a way to have my identified kids served both with me in pull out and in the regular ed classroom. This has really helped.
:)

This book is an invaluable resource for the classroom teacher who would like to adopt new strategies designed to meet the individual needs of each of his/her students. As a teacher of the gifted, I plan to incorporate several of the techniques within my classroom. However, general education teachers will find her suggestions equally valuable with their students as well. My favorite part is the author's inclusion of templates which provide for student assessment to use with her strategies. I love the Super Sentences strategy!

As a teacher in a regular classroom, I wanted some differentiated materials aimed at my GATE kids. My aim was to look and find out how to differentiate my lesson plans so that these gate kids can utilize their higher level skills. Maybe even take a normal lesson and extend it, fun things, and puzzles. However, the substance in the book was very sparse and I was thoroughly disappointed.

Sadly, the students who will make the least progress during the school year are our gifted students. With all the energy that teachers spend trying to help our low-achieving students pass the ever more stressful mandated state tests, our high-achieving students can get left behind.

Winebrenner's wonderful resource can help teachers manage the wide range of ability levels in our classrooms, without spending every waking moment designing different lessons.

This should be in every teacher's classroom library. The strategies work with ALL students.