Choosing a Program or School

One of the few psychological truths educators and psychologists agree on is that the most learning occurs when an optimal match between the learner's current understanding and the challenge of new learning material has been carefully engineered. Choosing a program or school for a gifted child who masters ideas and concepts quickly but behaves like a typical 4- or 5-year-old child is indeed a challenge.

Many intellectually gifted children master the cognitive content of most preschool and kindergarten programs quite early. They come to school ready and eager to learn concepts not usually taught until an older age. However, academic tasks designed for older children often require the learner to carry out teacher-directed activities while sitting still and concentrating on written worksheets. Young children, no matter how bright  they are, require active involvement with learning materials and often do not have the writing skills required for above-grade-level work.

Since many gifted children will hide their abilities in order to fit in more closely with classmates in a regular program, teachers may not be able to observe advanced intellectual or academic abilities directly. If a kindergartner enters school with fluent reading ability, the parent should share this information at the beginning of the year instead of waiting until the end of the year to complain that the teacher did not find out that the child could read. When parents and teachers pool their observations of a child's skills, they begin to work together to develop appropriate educational options for nurturing those abilities. Parents whose children have some unusual characteristics that will affect their learning needs have an obligation to share that information with educators, just as educators have an obligation to listen carefully to parent concerns.

When the entry level of learners is generally high but extremely diverse, an appropriate program must be highly individualized. Children should be encouraged to progress at their own learning rate, which will result in most cases in subject matter acceleration. The program should be broadly based, with planned opportunities for development of social, physical, and cognitive skills in the informal atmosphere of an early childhood classroom.

One primary task of teachers is to make appropriately advanced content accessible to young children, taking into account individual social and physical skills. Lessons can be broken into short units, activities presented as games, and many concepts taught through inquiry-oriented dialogue and experimentation with manipulatable materials. Language experience activities in reading and the use of manipulatable mathematics materials, as described in products such as Mathematics Their Way (Baratta-Lorton, 1976), are good examples of appropriate curriculum approaches.

An appropriate learning environment should also offer a gifted young child the opportunity to discover true peers at an early age. Parents of gifted children frequently find that, while their child can get along with other children in the neighborhood, an intense friendship is likely to develop with a more developmentally equal peer met in a special class or interest-based activity. Such parents may be dismayed to discover that this best friend does not live next door but across town, and they may wonder whether or not to give in to their child's pleas for inconvenient visits. Probably one of the most supportive activities a parent can engage in is to help a child find a true friend and make the effort required to permit the friendship to flower.

In looking for an appropriate program for their gifted preschooler, then, parents must be aware of the learning needs of young children and not be misled by so-called experts who advocate rigid academic approaches with an emphasis on rote memorization and repetition. Rather, wise parents will look for open-endedness, flexible grouping, and opportunities for advanced activities in a program that allows their child to learn in the company of intellectual peers.

References

Allen, R. V., & Allen, C. (1970). Language Experiences in Reading (Vols.1 & 2). Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica Press.
Baratta-Lorton, M. (1976). Mathematics Their Way: An Activity Center Mathematics Program for Early Childhood Education. Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley.
Roedell, W. C. (1989). Early development of gifted children. In J. VanTassel-Baska, & P. Olszewski-Kubilius (Eds.), Patterns Of Influence on Gifted Learners (pp.13-28). New York: Teachers College Press.
Roedell, W. C., Jackson, N. E., & Robinson, H. B. (1980). Gifted Young Children. New York: Teachers College Press.
Spivack, G., & Shure, M. B. (1974). Social Adjustment of Young Children. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

(NOTE. Reprinted by permission of the publisher from Roedell, (1989). Early development of gifted children. In J. VanTassel-Baska, & P. Olszewski-Kubilius (Eds.), Patterns of Influence on Gifted Learners, the Home, the Self, and the School (pp. 13-28). (New York: Teachers College Press, 1989 by Teachers College, Columbia University. All rights reserved.)

ERIC Digests are in the public domain and may be freely reproduced and disseminated.

This publication was prepared with funding from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, under contract no. RI88062007. The opinions expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of OERI or the Department of Education.

Resources For Parents of Gifted Children

Organizations:

National Association for Gifted Children

National Foundation for Gifted and Creative Children

Recommended Books:

Bringing Out the Best : A Resource Guide for Parents of Young Gifted Children

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