Talented and Gifted Resources

At home the other night we were hard at work on a Social Studies project when I got to thinking about social studies resources for gifted students. I know that these materials can be hard to find and many teachers create their own gifted and talented lesson plans.

But there’s a great social studies curriculum for high ability learners: the Center for Gifted Education (CFGE) at The College of William & Mary. Have you checked it out? You can find it here on the Kendall Hunt Publishing website: http://www.kendallhunt.com/index.cfm?PID=219&PGI=251.

CFGE Social Studies offers great topics, including these, just to name a few:

• Gift of the Nile
• Ancient China
• The Civil War: It’s Causes and Effects
• The Road to the White House: Electing the American President
• Defining Nations: Cultural Identity and Political Tensions

And the program meets the needs of Grades 2 through 12. It even includes implementation support such as guidelines, learning centers and teaching models, along with additional resources. Where else can you find this? As the world gets smaller and smaller, it seems to me at least that our kids really need to learn about these things. Many gifted education books offer science and reading programs, but it seems social studies is a little harder to find.
Do your schools have talented and gifted resources for social studies? Tell me what you’re using and how you use them, I’d be really interested to know.
 

Remember, when you were a student? Didn’t you always wonder what was behind those mysterious doors labeled “Faculty Lounge?” I did. Well, Kendall Hunt Publishing now has a slightly different version of the faculty lounge. It’s where we’re putting all sorts of goodies on sale. And as we continue to build the lounge, you’ll not only find everything from elementary school textbooks to high school science textbooks on sale, you’ll find articles about our different specialties, including inquiry based science and talented and gifted resources.

Check it out here when you have a chance!

Your erstwhile blogger has returned from the land of vacationers, fully refreshed and ready to blog. I don’t know if it was the time of year, or what, but while I was off I started wondering about the question in the headline of this post. How did we end up with “talented & gifted” resources, gifted education books, accelerated learning resources? Where did the terms come from?

So out of curiosity, I did a little research while I was off. It turns out there’s no general consensus as to the origin of the term “gifted.” And, in fact, as we’ve all known for years, there is quite a bit of controversy surrounding the use of the term. But that wasn’t the interesting part. Along the way I learned that what we call gifted education and curriculum for accelerated learners, etc. has been around, literally, for thousands of years. In the sixth and seventh centuries, under China’s Tang Dynasty, children identified as prodigies were summoned to the imperial court for advanced education. Also, Plato was a leading advocate of specialized education for those who were intellectually gifted.

Now, I knew that the Marland Report, A Nation at Risk, and the Jacob Javits Act more recently had memorable impacts on talented and gifted education, but I certainly had no idea how far back the origins went. See what happens when I have extra time on my hands!

I thought I'd share a little more information on our outstanding Professional Development department. They have recently become an affiliate of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is the leading advocacy organization focused on infusing 21st century skills into education.  The organization brings together the business community, education leaders, and policy makers to define a powerful vision for 21st century education to ensure every child's success as citizens and workers in the 21st century by providing tools and resources to help facilitate and drive change.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills Professional Development Affiliate Program equips individuals and organizations with resources and assistance in integrating 21st century skills into their professional development practice.
Kendall Hunt is a professional development affiliate of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills which supports the integration of 21st century skills into all aspects of teaching and learning.

Kendall Hunt's Professional Development experts can help with training and support for any of our programs, including our talented and gifted resources, and our science programs, from elementary school science textbooks, through our high school chemistry and physics programs. Check out what they can offer you!

Have you visited our Professional Development area? KH offers professional development support for many of our programs, including our accelerated learning resources. Here’s some news on a recent conference from our Professional Development Manager, Laura Lottes:

The Talented and Gifted Professional Development Conference held in Columbia, South Carolina November 18^th and 19^th was a big success! 

The conference was designed to provide training to both users and non-users of Kendall Hunt talented and gifted resources and curricula for high ability learners.  Eighty-six teachers from 29 elementary schools and administrators from the South Carolina Department of Education participated in the two-day event.  The participants had four topics to choose from including Math, Science, Language Arts and Social Studies.  Our author groups from Project M3 and the Center for Gifted Education at the College of William & Mary provided us with the resources for content of the workshops.

We are so grateful to our dedicated customers, as well as our future customers, who believe in life long learning and continuing education for their staff!

Here’s my question…as a teacher, what do your gifted students do during RTI time? It used to be that the students who struggled or had behavioral issues were the ones who “fell through the cracks.” More and more I feel like it’s now the gifted or advanced students who fall through. Of course, in a perfect world, no one would fall through the cracks. And I give all the credit in the world to the classroom teacher who is trying to balance the needs of 20-30 students with vastly differing needs, levels and abilities. 

I know that in my son’s school, everyday they have a half hour of RTI time. During this time, the other students are engaged in group reading. For some students, that group reading is beneficial, for the more advanced students, they are bored. As I’ve indicated here before, his school doesn’t have a lot of accelerated learning resources or books for gifted students - they don’t even have a curriculum for high ability learners. And they only go to their gifted class twice a week. So what’s the answer for these students?

I did give the principal one suggestion when I spoke with him earlier today (first time in five years that I’ve actually felt the need to call him, and I didn’t want to just call and complain without offering at least one solution). I said the teacher create a couple groups of the other students, give them a research topic or question, and tell them that they must make a presentation, complete with visual aids, in two weeks. It would at least put that RTI time to good use for them.

 I’d love to hear from teachers who have this same dilemma. I know many schools don’t have gifted education books in class, and some lack even the basic talented and gifted resources. So what do you do?

They’re here, they’re here!! The 2009-2010 PreK-12 catalogs are now available on our website! Chock full of high school science textbooks, primary school textbooks, accelerated learning resources, and much, much more. 

There are two catalogs, available via pdf download: the first showcases our outstanding elementary school textbooks for grades PreK through 8^th grade. The second catalog covers our offerings of high school science textbooks and programs, math, health & fitness, and talented and gifted resources. Best of all, you can be green and still see the catalogs if you just download them here: http://www.kendallhunt.com/index.cfm?PID=5970&PGI=0.  From this page you can also download our Reading Resources and Gifted Education catalogs. Check them out!

I’ve introduced various steps in the publishing process for a high school science textbook. These same steps would apply to elementary textbook or talented and gifted textbook or any school textbook for that matter. You are wecome to review some of our Kendall Hunt Publishing Company's textbooks at our website.

The next big step in developing a high school science textbook is composition. Composition also known as typesetting, is the process of taking the manuscripts and loading them into a paging program, usually Quark or InDesign. Then they “format” the document. They add all of the design features that were determined based on the different elements within the manuscript. This would include various levels of headings, bulleted and numbered listings, table styles, chapter and unit opening features and so on. It also includes pulling the art features into the program and placing those in appropriate places per predetermined style guidelines and adding the captions.

As a general rule of thumb, we want the figures placed as close to the callouts as possible, usually top or bottom of the page. This is so that they are easily accessible after they are mentioned within the text so that the student can review them and then quickly find his/her place where they were reading. Comprehension is the key and you want to keep things as clear as possible. A good design holds and draws the student in and retains interest without making things confusing. You need a good flow. The design would vary based on the intended audience; whether it is for elementary students, high school, and also whether it is intended for a broad range of students or specifically for high level learners.

It seems like the last few years there has been a veritable explosion of accelerated learning resources flooding the market. Maybe it’s because our own offerings in books for gifted student have grown so much. We now have talented and gifted resources available for:

• Math
• Language Arts
• Science
• Social Studies

And I’m not just talking about a book or two for each subject. Each is a robust curriculum for high ability learners. What about your talented and gifted resources? Are they books…curriculum programs? And how does your school choose…does the gifted teacher decide on his/her own? What role do the principal and the district play? 

One of my favorite books is out with a brand new edition - the third edition, in fact.  It is an inquiry based science book entitled Science Experiments by the Hundreds.  It starts out with an experiment that lets students figure out whether the speed of the flow ketchup is affected by its temperature (personally, I think the speed of ketchup is most affected by how hungry the person waiting for the ketchup is!), and ends with an experiment involving a toy truck and the impact extra weight in the truck has on its ability to go up an incline.  I think this book and the other books related to it could easily be used in earlier grades as talented and gifted resources or as part of a curriculum for high ability learners.

The really great thing is that as students are doing the many "investigations," they are also learning the proper way to do an experiment, solving the issues in a systematic way.  You don't have to spend a bunch of money on special equipment, most of the objects and supplies are commonly found at home or in the classroom.  Best of all, the kids are learning through inquiry based science without even being aware that they're learning.  How can you beat that!  Check it out when you have a chance!

I don’t know about you, but when I was in school, there was no such thing as talented and gifted resources, gifted education books, or, for that matter, talented and gifted education. We had accelerated courses, but those were more about working a grade level ahead, using a high school biology book in 8^th grade, or using middle school books in 5^th grade, rather than the textbooks for elementary school.

What type of accelerated learning resources is your school using? Do you have a budget for books for gifted students? At my son’s school, the gifted teacher does a wonderful job of creating projects for the children using ideas of her own because she doesn’t have a budget. But I think about how much easier her job would be and how much more robust the program could be if she had a budget to purchase a curriculum for high ability learners.