Making Contacts: my week!

Sunday, 14 November 2010 07:02

This week I have had 3 chances to share deep discussion with groups about gifted children and their opportunities in education. I enjoy having such chances as it reminds me that there are many individuals who share concerns about gifted children, and who try, in their respective settings, to ensure that opportunities arise.

I presented a reflection on the recent Youth Summit to academics in Bathurst. We talked about the potential for these big events to bring together gifted children from many places and  to learn about themselves and each other. We also talked about the preservice teachers who participated and how this event gave them insight into the needs of gifted children in their classrooms. Teacher education needs to provide chances to bring giftedness to the attention of young teachers, ensuring they come into classsrooms with an awareness.

At an inservice with CEO on Wednesday teachers who have been working on a range of activities all year met to evaluate the program for this year- which included some focussed workshops for children in writing, drama and science, as well as teacher experiences - and begin to plan for next year. This group of teachers has been working for an extended period, as a flexible group, learning about differentiation and strategies to provide creative learning experience for gifted children. On Wednesday they also learned about animation with powerpoint - something that offers chances for all children in a classroom to take it as far as they want to. The enthusiasm and dedication to finding ways to provide gifted children with worthwhile learning is tangible in this group, and I know makes a difference.

Finally I met with the DET Western Region gifted and talented team - again a group of long standing that has been working diligently to provide opportunity across Western Region NSW. A key strategy is ixtend, a virtual class for students from Year 5- Year 8, that provides a 12 week program of learning, following the Renzulli framework. This program has operated in an evolving fashion now for 5 years, and each year gets better. We also talked about other plans for supporting teachers with professional learning to enhance classroom teaching.

A good week! Exciting in that each chance indicated that something is happening- somewhere- for gifted children. I am sure these groups exist in other areas and that there are teams of people thinking about how to offer gifted children something. A little problematic in that I am also conscious of the need to keep alerting the education systems that gifted children have needs in the classroom/school and that they also need to be able to achieve their potential in school. Our dream would be that it became an integral part of the system.