Understanding the Gifted Learner

An informational handout for teachers and parents.

It is important to make yourself aware of the characteristics of students who posses gifted potential.  The list below is a good resource to orient your thinking about high achievers and potentially gifted students.  There is much literature available to guide you.  Your gifted support teacher can provide you with additional information and point you to other resources.

Students with high academic performance may be gifted learners, if they possess other aspects of gifted potential.  High achievement needs to be distinguished from gifted potential.  They are not the same, although they can be correlated.  The needs of high achievers usually can be met within the regular education program.  Curricular and materials modifications such as using literature based reading, extended questioning and individualizing pacing can be offered to high achievers.  The behaviors below help to conceptualize the difference between the bright child who high achieves and the student who may posses gifted potential.  (This list is adopted from Challenge, Good Apple Inc.  Issue 34.)

Another important issue relates to those students who do not show high achievement in regular education classes but who do possess gifted potential.  Students who may have visual-spatial or logical-mathematical gifts may not present to their teachers with “high achievement” characteristics on typical school tasks, which tend to be more verbal-linguistic.  Their “gifts” might not be tapped by the typical regular education curriculum.  Other students with gifted potential may be either rebellious or less social and also may not come to the notice of regular education teachers.  Additionally, a small subset of students with learning disabilities can also be gifted learners.  It is this more heterogeneous group that may not present with “school smarts” that we might tend to miss.

SC3G

August, 2000