What would you like to see at your school?

Kylie - posted on 02/05/2009

Thank you Ellen for your idea of an extension box. I would not have thought of doing that and it is a great idea that really any teacher could utilise for the bright students (will pass this on to my numerous teaching friends).

I am going to try this with my daughter's Teacher this year. She actually just reads her book from home when she finishes an activity early. I'm really excited - thank you!!!

Candy - posted on 02/05/2009

I'm teaching as a casual in preschools at the moment, and struggling to make the other staff understand that the gifted children need to be extended more- they become more disruptive every day, but the staff can't seem to understand that this is a sign of frustration and they're falling down on the job as teachers.  They just get mad with the kids for mucking up. 

Which means, of course, that you can pick the gifted kids easily because they're the ones who fly to my side the moment I walk in the door... because they recognise an ally in an unfriendly environment. I'm the only one there who recognises their needs.

I mean, seriously, pity the poor boy who had to sit through TWO WEEKS of each letter of the alphabet at group time, when he already knew them all backwards.  I took him aside and worked on his writing skills at group time, so he wouldn't have his slow handwriting dragging his quick thinking back at school, and he became my friend for life haha... but this only happened when I was present, despite his mum being keen to have extension activities programmed in for him.

The first thing we need is recognition of the need- we will get nowhere without this.  Be persistent. Bored clever children are the biggest disrupters of classroom order, because they know exactly how to get up the teacher's nose... tell them this!  Where do they think corporate criminals come from?! The intellectual energy needs to be channelled, for the good of us all.  These clever children are potentially our society's future inventors, environmentalists, leaders, philosophers, peacemakers. Argue the case strongly from a 'big picture' point of view rather than making it just about your own kid.

Ellen - posted on 02/03/2009

http://karenkindrick.typepad.com/courage...

http://intentionalparents.com/

http://simplycharlottemason.com/home/

These are the ones that survived my computer switch around though I think they are more from when I was researching homeschooling instead of a continiued struggle with public school. Usually I just google the topic and see what I find out there. I also look at their vertical alignment and follow the trail up the grade levels until I find what I think he can handle. I've found some neat things at NASA and Smithsonian. I haven't had a chance to check with National Geographic, but I'm certain there are cool things there. If I figure out where the other ones ran away to I'll post them as well.

Molly - posted on 02/03/2009

Ellen -

Thanks!  That helps.  I am trying to do exactly what you describe. 

When you have time, can you share some of those homeschooling, etc links you've already found?

Ellen - posted on 02/03/2009

I tried this with a teacher last year. She told me what they were working on and I created a box of things that Z could do without teacher intervention. At the end of the unit he would bring the box home and I would exchange it for the next unit. What I looked for were books that extended the lesson at his level. Checked the homeschooling websites for activities and included those. I tried to make sure I used the topic in all core curriculum areas (language arts, math, science, social studies) so that he could see the extension accross multiple discplines. I also made sure that the activities were all higher order thinking instead of the typical worksheet of right and wrong answers. Why, how, explain type thngs. We just got technology in the school that I'm tempted to use as well. There are ipod sessions from Nova and National Geographic and other places like that that the teacher can down load into an ipod for them to view as extension. They could also just set up links on a web page that they can go to to explore the topic further. You might need to supply head phones to not disrupt the room. This worked as long as I had the teacher buy in which I only did for a couple units and then she "lost" the box.

There are things we do as teachers in our room that help as well. Like develop a game or new way of teaching the material that we can share with the class. This gets them way up there in the thought process to work with the material. HTH!