Intellectually Gifted Student Response Paper

PBR LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction - Identifying Intellectually Gifted

When asking yourself what an intellectually gifted student is, the first thing you may focus upon is their ability to achieve high results. Public Schools of North Carolina encompasses it as the following, ‘the potential to perform at substantially high levels of accomplishment when compared with others of their age, experiences or environment’ (Public of North Carolina, 2012). This can also be further extended from Avery County Schools, who state that ‘Academically or intellectually gifted students exhibit high performance capability in intellectually areas, specific academic fields, or in both’ (Avery County Schools, 2008). So, intellectually gifted means to perform

Kilgour explained that feels he does not know of any one strict definition of what makes a gifted student but that there are usually identifiable traits (P. Kilgour, personal communication, September 16, 20140). His explanation of these traits match up with what is stated in an article entitled ‘Challenging Gifted Students in the Regular Classroom’ by The Council for Exceptional Children. This article reads that identifying these learners involves three observations that can be made by their teachers. First that they manage to complete their work at a much faster pace. Second, that they will seek a deeper understanding from their classmates. Lastly, that there interests will not tend to relate to their age but rather like those of older students (The Council for Exceptional Children,

In support of Goodwin, Ben Johnson questions in his article ‘Liven Up Your Lessons by Giving Students Choices’ if rather than supplying a diverse variety of learning activities, educators simply stick with their preferred ‘tried and true strategy’. Johnson’s argument for choice involving more engagement is that with choice we can get them love it, then they will remain learning (Johnson, 2014). It is interesting to note that Goodwin also wrote in his article that diminishing results were collected when providing students with too many choices.

Alternatively to this discussion, there are some who see the best methodology in combining the two. Peter Kilgour, in the interview, provided his opinion on the matter with choosing to ‘mix it up’ (P. Kilgour, personal communication, September 16, 20140). ‘The goal should be to make it exciting and rewarding for them to do something different to the others, rather that a punishment’.