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I mean individualization in particular, which was discussed on the other thread, which you were a participant in as well. People were posting rhapsodically about the education they got in the gifted programs, not considering that their less gifted peers were sitting in the classrooms, all working on the same worksheet, or whatever. I also meant the enrichment type activities such as you noted above. In some districts, these type of things are reserved for the "gifted", however it is defined.
I frankly think that education should be as individualized as possible, actually.
That said, most students are going to be mostly at grade level most of the time; it's the law of the bell curve. About 68% of kids will be right in the middle and a little off to each side either way or so. Okay, so this implies that teaching to that middle will be appropriate enough (notice I'm not saying "absolutely perfect," but "appropriate enough") for most kids most of the time. In other words, working on a worksheet (to use your example) would be the right approach for those 68%, provided that the worksheet itself were appropriately challenging for that grade.
The other 32% will basically fall too far to the left or the right to be comfortably or appropriately accommodated, and that's exactly where I think differentiated education really needs to begin in earnest for all those "outliers" beyond the middle. We need to start there because that's where the disparity between where those kids are and what they're getting is the greatest, and from there, we can work in toward the middle.
To me, though, that doesn't mean that the 68% kids who are appropriately placed in their grade lounge around doing meaningless busywork. If that's happening, it's not a gifted education issue as much as it is a deeper teaching issue! This does mean, though, that for gifted kids (for instance), we don't have special field trips and pull-out programs, but we do advance them to higher specific subjects based on their individual abilities. That might mean that for a hypothetical gifted kid, he goes to 7th grade for reading, 3rd grade for math, and his "home" grade of 4th for art and PE, for instance.
This would mean that approximately 68% of any given class would consist of kids who were in sync with the age/grade correlation we now have, and 32% would be kids whose abilities (higher than their age or lower) necessitated their placement at a different level.
Oh, and you're right that the "enrichment" activities are all too often reserved for gifted kids.
I frankly think that education should be as individualized as possible, actually.
That said, most students are going to be mostly at grade level most of the time; it's the law of the bell curve. About 68% of kids will be right in the middle and a little off to each side either way or so. Okay, so this implies that teaching to that middle will be appropriate enough (notice I'm not saying "absolutely perfect," but "appropriate enough") for most kids most of the time. In other words, working on a worksheet (to use your example) would be the right approach for those 68%, provided that the worksheet itself were appropriately challenging for that grade.
The other 32% will basically fall too far to the left or the right to be comfortably or appropriately accommodated, and that's exactly where I think differentiated education really needs to begin in earnest for all those "outliers" beyond the middle. We need to start there because that's where the disparity between where those kids are and what they're getting is the greatest, and from there, we can work in toward the middle.
To me, though, that doesn't mean that the 68% kids who are appropriately placed in their grade lounge around doing meaningless busywork. If that's happening, it's not a gifted education issue as much as it is a deeper teaching issue! This does mean, though, that for gifted kids (for instance), we don't have special field trips and pull-out programs, but we do advance them to higher specific subjects based on their individual abilities. That might mean that for a hypothetical gifted kid, he goes to 7th grade for reading, 3rd grade for math, and his "home" grade of 4th for art and PE, for instance.
This would mean that approximately 68% of any given class would consist of kids who were in sync with the age/grade correlation we now have, and 32% would be kids whose abilities (higher than their age or lower) necessitated their placement at a different level.
Oh, and you're right that the "enrichment" activities are all too often reserved for gifted kids.
Yes, I agree with what you said. However, it seems like the "gifted" kids do get the benefit of a lot of creative instruction that the others don't always get. Your example of 7th grade for reading, 3rd for math and 4th for art and PE is what I consider individualization. One of my DDs was in a multi-age class once (2/3 as a 3rd grader), and she was in the 2nd grade for reading and finally learned to read. They didn't seem to do that at her school except in the multi-age classes, even though (they said) the multiage classes were not to remediate older kids or accelerate younger ones.
I have yet to meet a parent who doesn't think their child is special in some way.
Sure. But there's a difference in thinking little Jessica is special because you love her and she has Aunt Katie's pretty green eyes, and thinking little Jessica is special because she was doing indepth demographic studies of her kindergarten class, complete with pie charts and Venn diagrams.
How come no choice that says if they say they are, then they must have been identified as such by the school or something? Seems like your poll is loaded toward one side IMO. Or were you asking if the parent just thinks they are with no official testing haven taken place?
How come no choice that says if they say they are, then they must have been identified as such by the school or something? Seems like your poll is loaded toward one side IMO. Or were you asking if the parent just thinks they are with no official testing haven taken place?
The poll is about young children. Too young to be tested.
Every parent that I have known believes that their child is gifted. What parent wants to think of their child as only being average? An honest one, I suppose.
I have yet to meet a parent who doesn't think their child is special in some way.
You beat me to it!
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