One (Baby) Step at a Time: The Promise of Incremental Change

I recently attended a presentation on Personalized Learning with a team of middle school teachers who instruct advanced learners through honors level courses.  We had great diversity in the group, with multiple grade levels and content areas represented. The focus of this session was on developing Independent Learners. We learned that truly Independent Learners have skills to problem-solve, think critically, manage time and resources, ask good questions, and make choices to further learning. Our team agreed that developing Independent Learners is a cause we can all support - and it is a meaningful cause in the context of our honors classes.

Early in our session, we concluded that our students are not often asked to operate as Independent Learners.  Much of the work in which we have students engage have predetermined "finish lines" with obstacles carefully removed.  To problem-solve in an authentic way, one must encounter authentic problems!  Our curriculum materials are generally designed to get students from A to B along the least complex and most time-efficient path possible.  This efficiency surely ensures the coverage of extensive content, but it does not support long-term retention. 

Skills of independence are developed through practice.  Students develop them by taking charge of their own learning, making substantive choices, reflecting on their work, and asking for help when it is really needed.  Creating an environment for this kind of growth requires teachers to clarify expectations in some areas and release control in others.  Learning paths diverge, and the teacher acts as a "mentor in the middle" providing support, guidance, and information as needed.  This is a significant shift and requires venturing beyond the comfort zone for all.


How do we hand over the reigns to eager (and some not-so eager) students, when so many of our units come with questions, resources, and processes ready to deliver?  And how do we make sure that, in handing over those reins, students don't gallop around or jump over something critical?

We start small!




I propose the "more of this" and "less of that" path to meaningful change.  When planning a unit or lesson or project, we aim to provide MORE:

• Choice
• Real-world application
• Collaboration
• Inquiry
• Student-directed work time

When planning a unit or lesson or project, we aim to provide LESS/FEWER:

• Assignments where the goal is for all students to have the same answers
• Activities where all students use the same resources and processes for learning
• Rote memorization
• Time spent practicing at the knowledge/comprehension levels
• Whole-group direct-instruction

Fast change is overwhelming for teachers and confusing to students. Slow change is empowering to teachers and exciting for students.  By working in the today and aiming for more and less, the student's experience is enriched starting now.  Teachers have time to read, think, talk and experiment while moving forward...one step at a time.

Serving the Silent Minority: The Visual/Spatial Learner

Traditionally, schools are brimming with words; lessons are delivered sequentially, and information is layered on one brick at a time. Education's verbal-sequential orientation originated during industrial age - when uniformity and efficiency were of the highest value.  

Now, originality and creativity are at a premium. Education is poised to make its greatest shift in generations. As we move away from extensive lecture and whole-class textbooks to more personalized and authentic work, there is one group of historically under-served learners who will greatly benefit: the rare and remarkable visual-spatial learner.

Visual-spatial thinkers learn by doing - by building, by experimenting, by manipulating, and by creating. They are systems thinkers who can, according to expert Dr. Linda Keger Silverman, “…orchestrate large amounts of information from different domains, but they often miss the details.” They don’t learn step-by-step, and they don't learn through rote exercises and repetition. Ironically, as these students begin to struggle, the first intervention is often to provide more rote practice and to break ideas down into even smaller and smaller pieces.

The visual-spatial learner's exceptional perceptual reasoning skills are often remarkably disparate from their verbal reasoning skills. This disparity, along with poor organizational and time-management skills, can lead to significant underachievement. Because much of school targets their weaknesses, visual-spatial learners can disengage, lose heart, and even drop out. Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison knew a thing or two about this.

So what can we do about it?  We can target the visual-spatial thinker's STRENGTHS and then use that success to breed more. Like a car that needs gas for a long trip ahead, so too do visual/spatial learners. By providing learning experiences where they EXCELL and LEAD, we are filling their hearts and minds (and tanks!) with self-efficacy, hope, and ambition. How do we do this?

• Design performance tasks which pose big-picture challenges
• Provide students with learning opportunities that will inspire and develop their natural talents (coding, engineering projects, visual arts, Lego League)
• Use the “hardest problem first” strategy, as visual-spatial learners generally do better with complexity than rote
• Provide academic choice so that students can tailor learning experiences to their own strengths and interests

Teaching visual-spatial learners, and developing all students' 21st Century Skills, requires us to let go. When we do so, we allow understanding to grow along non-linear paths. It is messy, and it is so worth it.

Early Entrance to Kindergarten: Fall Behind or Fast Forward?

93% of American students begin kindergarten at five years of age. Approximately 6% now “redshirt” by delaying the start of kindergarten by one year. The remaining 1% gain entry to kindergarten at 4 years of age. In today’s world of enriched/accelerated learning opportunities are these “greenshirt” students helped or hindered by the head start to school that early entrance affords them?

Research has long shown that grade acceleration, including an early start to kindergarten, is beneficial to significantly advanced gifted students. Districts have an irrefutable responsibility to parents and students who seek early entrance to kindergarten. They must develop an application process that is equitable, transparent, and child-centered. The process must be open enough to place the child who will flourish in the more structured academic realm of kindergarten, yet it must be conservative enough to protect the long-term interests of the child who may not be ready. Districts use a myriad of tools to assess the academic, intellectual, and social/emotional readiness of a child for kindergarten. Assessments and inventories such as the WPPSI, GESELL, and Iowa Acceleration Scale help provide objective measures to accompany the subjective but crucial information parents and caregivers provide.

When a District’s open and thorough identification process results in an early entrant acceptance, your real work, as a parent or guardian, must begin. Was your child close to the “cut-off?” How do your son’s achievement levels compare to those of the students he is about to join? Does your daughter’s learning profile, including IQ assessments, indicate an exceptional capacity for learning? Will her comparatively advanced achievement levels likely be maintained over time? Answers to these questions must be central to your decision-making.

For highly gifted students who have exceptionally advanced academic skills and appropriate levels of social-emotional development, early entrance to kindergarten will be an important step in assuring a challenging and engaging start to the school experience. Waiting another year for this child to begin school will further the divide between her learning level and her classmates’.

When a child’s results are closer to cut-offs, and aptitude measures less than two standard deviations above the norm (98%ile), parents are wise to consider waiting. Placement in advanced, accelerated, and honors courses in your child’s future will depend upon how his academic performance compares with students in his grade level, not his age group. Standardized achievement tests such as NWEA and ITBS are not age-normed; they are grade-level normed.

A well-considered early start to kindergarten can be a gift to your child. Keep in mind that a temporary “fast forward” isn’t worth “falling behind” in the long run. Your school district’s “yes” is your invitation to study the data to make the best long-term decision you can for your child.

Defeat the "Yeah, Buts..." to Differentiate!

As a coordinator of High Potential Services I often speak with teachers about differentiating instruction for gifted learners. Differentiation is likely the most complex and challenging instructional techniques we are asked to employ in meeting the ever more diverse needs of our learners.

The very thought of differentiating content, instructional processes, and/or products for anywhere from 20 to 150 students is daunting at the least and utterly defeating at the most. When confronted with what seems like an impossible task, the human mind is compelled to save itself from what it deems certain failure. This defense mechanism, which I refer to as the "yeah, buts..." blocks the creative process needed to be an agile and responsive educator.

What can we do to make the enormity of differentiation not only manageable but inviting? We must address the "Yeah, buts..." head on.

Yeah, but ... #1:
Yeah, allowing students to "test out" or move at a faster pace through content sounds good, but I am responsible for teaching ALL of the standards to all of my students.
Answer:
No you aren't! As Susan Winebrenner states in her book Teaching Gifted Kids in Today's Classroom "You are not required to teach all the standards to all of your students. You are only required to document that the standards assigned to you have been mastered by the students assigned to you." Keeping this in mind frees you from feeling you must "cover" every standard with every student. If a child knows how to do something already you are free, and even obligated, to excuse them from the work required of others to allow for a different path for learning.

Yeah, but ... #2:
Yeah, pre-testing sounds like a great idea, but it wastes valuable learning time.
Answer:
Technology is helping enormously with the time challenge. Through quizzes on Schoology or games on Kahoot you can gather a whole lot of data in very little time. Best yet, these programs do the correcting for you!  Keep in mind that for students who have already mastered the content, or very nearly so, a pretest could capture instructional time that would have otherwise been lost.

Yeah, but ...  #3:
Yeah differentiation sounds like a great idea, but I teach many subjects every day. How am I supposed to differentiate for every learner in every subject that I teach?
Answer:
You aren't!  Start very, very, small. One subject for one student is enough in the beginning. Think of a student that you know obviously needs something more to be truly challenged. Open the door to an independent extension project. Though seemingly small, this act will have a big impact on that learner.

Yeah, but ... #4:
Yeah, allowing gifted students to work on more advanced topics sounds great, but what if they just waste their time?
Answer:
Set expectations. Gifted students still need their teacher to guide their learning and set expectations. Let your students know that you need evidence of progress and learning from them because as a teacher it is your responsibility to make sure they are growing. If they decide not to use time given well, you will have no choice but to provide for them structured tasks that provide evidence of consistent learning. In other words, get to work or you are going to loose the privilege!

"Yeah, buts" are an understandable product of your brain's recognition that differentiating instruction is really, really hard to do.  Push beyond "Yeah, buts" to open your mind to the great possibilities of differentiated instruction.

Why is the Professor Absent-Minded? The Neuroscience of “Smart” Stereotypes

  

Intellectuals have long been stereotyped in literature and popular media. With the advent of modern tools for neuroscience, we are allowed to literally peek into the minds of the intellectually gifted and there we find the underpinnings of our society's "smart" stereotypes.

Consider for a moment the “Absent-Minded Professor. This figure, often shown pondering complex formulas and grand abstractions, is characterized by mismatched socks, “lost” glasses on his head, and late appearances to classes with papers all a mess. This “She may be able to terraform Mars but she can’t find her keys”-type of disorganization is not a weakness of character, it is a weakness in the brain’s executive functioning. Interestingly, brain scans of highly gifted children show that the prefrontal cortex is less developed (thinner) than that of more intellectually typical peers. The prefrontal cortex is home to the executive functions, and they are responsible for planning, organizing, and pacing. The prefrontal cortex is thinner in the highly gifted, it is thought, because these children are busy wiring deep in their minds (noting relationships, forming hypothesis, wondering…), rather than attending to more immediate needs such as orientation in time and space.

The predisposition to “deep brain” thinking in some highly gifted children may help explain the evolution of the “nerd” stereotype as well.  Rather than working on hand-eye coordination and gross motor skills, some highly gifted children spend more time thinking than moving. The lack of athleticism and perpetually broken eyeglasses which embody the nerd stereotype, may be rooted in this early preferential behavior.

What about the “Mad Scientist?” What neurological underpinnings can account for this intellectual stereotype?  Studies show a measurably thicker corpus callosum in gifted individuals than in typical peers. The corpus callosum is the structure which supports “dialogue” between the two hemispheres of the brain. The thicker the corpus callosum, the more efficient the communication between the neural networks of opposite hemispheres - some of which may seem unrelated. The firing of broad neural networks together, it is thought, can generate ideas which before were unimagined.  The “Ah ha!” moment and an eccentric world view can both be due to the efficiency of a corpus callosum which carries signals frequently and fast.

By considering possible neurological roots for behavioral patterns in some highly gifted, the human impulse to label and judge may be eased. Let’s forget the stereotypes and celebrate the wonderful diversity and talent in the highly gifted among us.

One Size Fits Few: A “Continuum of Services” Approach to High Potential and G/T Programming

As is true with most aspects of humanity, intellectual, academic and creative strengths come in varying degrees and have immeasurable potentials to grow.  When designing a program whose mission is to extend the development of these very strengths, a school district must respond to this diversity with an equally diverse set of tools. At its foundation, a district must have high quality, differentiated instruction taking place in each and every classroom. Without that, no effort to extend or enrich an advanced student’s experience will be enough. Students spend the vast majority of their educational lives in the regular classroom. The content and instructional practices must require some reach, of even the most advanced students. Rich and differentiated curricular materials and, most importantly, a highly skilled, dynamic teacher, ensure this.

But what of students who have unique and significant strengths for which the classroom experience alone cannot guarantee growth? Though not federally mandated, it is the obligation of the responsive school district to tap and extend these assets. In Minnetonka, we do so by providing a continuum of “High Potential” services. Identification processes and time/duration of service are determined by the type and degree of the exceptionality of the need. Services which require more time out of the regular classroom and for longer durations require exceptional performance on standardized assessments (IQ tests and achievement tests).  Pulling a student from the enriched environment of our quality classrooms must be supported by objective measures. Those services which require less time out of the regular classroom and/or for shorter durations make use of some standardized measures yet have the flexibility to include teacher input on “soft skills.”  Aptitude in these areas, such as creativity and curiosity, are not easily captured by standardized assessments yet, for students with exceptional strengths in these areas, direct service will carry them to new levels.

When a continuum of services for advanced learners exists, it can be difficult for students and their parents to understand why some children receive multiple extension/enrichment services, and others receive none.  This is particularly confusing in a school district like Minnetonka where our classroom instruction alone leads to such robust growth.  High Potential Services are needs-driven.  When we analyze student achievement data, we find that very strong students – even those who are scoring in the high ninety percentiles on NWEA - are consistently meeting their growth targets through our excellent differentiated classroom instruction.  For this reason, we must target resources and services to the “outlier” who has such a different level of achievement or capacity that growth is highly unlikely to occur without the interventions High Potential programming provides.

Having a wide continuum of services, each with its own goals, identification processes, and delivery model, is critically important to meeting the diverse needs of today’s advanced learners. 

           -Diane Rundquist

Minnetonka’s Continuum of High Potential Services: 

Program Name	Time and Duration of Service	Identification Process	Service Description
Navigator (grades 2-5)	Daily throughout the school year	·  Comprehensive IQ test administered by a psychologist ·  Minimum IQ 140 moves to “Simulation Experience.” ·  Success in Simulation results in acceptance to the program	·  Provide academic challenge through accelerated and gifted curriculum ·  Develop social/emotional skills through instructional practices and placement with intellectual peers and programing
Wings (grades 1-5) HP Seminar (grades 6-7)	60 minutes per week pullout, full school year	·  Standardized IQ assessment given by an approved administrator ·  Minimum IQ 130 ·  Achievement score above 90th percentile is required in most cases *Once identified for service, the student automatically qualifies for each subsequent year	Provide identified gifted students multidisciplinary, novel learning experiences while meet social/emotional needs
Academic Extension (kindergarten and grade 1)	Two, 30-minute pull outs per week for math and two 30-minute pull-outs for reading, full school year	·  Evidence of achievement levels 2-3 years above district norms are required. ·  Multiple assessment tools are used:  NWEA, Fountas and Pinnell Inventories, CogAT *Unless evidence exists that continued participation will not benefit the child (e.g. stress from the work being too advanced) an identified kindergarten student will go on in the program to grade 1.	Compact or pre-test through grade-level standards and anchor instruction in the standards of the following grade level (or higher as needed).  This ensures the proper level of challenge, exposure to new content, and pacing for maximum growth.
Subject Acceleration ·  Math grades 4-8 ·  Science grds 6-9	Daily, full school year	·  Standardized achievement trend data indicates exceptional achievement and readiness for accelerated content level ·  Strict adherence to criteria strongly recommended due to the negative consequences of accelerating an unprepared student (frustration, knowledge “gaps,” having to repeat content in future grades	Compact or pre-test through grade-level standards and anchor instruction in the standards of the following grade level (or higher as needed).  This ensures the proper level of challenge, exposure to new content, and pacing for maximum growth.
Academic Enrichment (grades 1-5)	30-45 minute pull out groups, 1 to 2 times weekly, duration varies from 8 weeks to entire school year	·  Standardized achievement data above 99th percentile ·  Classroom performance on common assessment can support placement *Enrichment group identification is limited to the specific time period for which the student was identified.  Enrichment groups are flexible, and different students may participate at different times in their school careers.	Small group math or reading instruction using higher order thinking materials
Honors Courses (grades 6-8)	Daily, full school year	·  Standardized achievement trend data indicates readiness for added challenge ·  Consideration of multiple data points (e.g. Cold Write scores, teacher input, etc.)	Enriched content provides greater depth and higher expectations: Honors Language Arts (6-8) Honors Science (7-8) Honors Global Studies (8)
Independent Investigations	45 minute pull out 1 to 2 times per week for 8 weeks	Strong readers with high curiosity identified by classroom teachers	Identified students research a topic of personal interest. Work is guided by a high potential paraprofessional.
21st Century Coaching	45 minute pull out 1 to 2 times per week for 8 weeks	Students who have applied to other services and whose scores did not reach criteria but indicated significant strengths	Small groups of students engage in an 8 week collaborative study focusing on 21st century skills (creativity, STEM, critical thinking).  Work is guided by guided by a high potential paraprofessional.
Continental Math League, Geography Bee, Spelling Bee, Chess Club, Destination Imagination	Varies	Open to all students	Opportunities available to all students to engage and extend their learning

Engaging the New Gifted Mind: Middle School Edition

Adolescents, as they journey from the children they were to the young adults they will be, are at a sometimes treacherous and sometimes euphoric stage of development. Giftedness, with its overexciteabilities and intensities - and its divergent and creative drives - makes adolescence all the more complex to navigate.

In the year ahead, Minnetonka will recommit itself to its gifted adolescents by launching a new, comprehensive middle school High Potential Service model. Our model addresses three core drives of gifted middle schoolers:

• ·         Need for Growth (academic and personal)
• ·         Need to Wonder (authentic, relevant, challenging work)  
• ·         Need to Belong (acceptance by others and self)

Absolutely critical to meeting the “Growth” needs of gifted adolescents, is the offering of honors level and accelerated coursework in nearly all core classes. Such leveled classes provide High Potential students necessary rigor on a daily basis. This practice is well-established in Minnetonka, and we continue to add and refine advanced learning opportunities.

But what about the need to wonder? To belong?

New this year, identified High Potential students will participate in a once-per-week pull-out class for one period.  During this period, High Potential teachers will facilitate learning and connecting by setting before students relevant, high-interest projects that allow for choice and emphasize Sir Ken Robinson’s “Four C’s.” Lessons are active, with students “doing” vs listening. Examples include the “Future City” challenge, "A Day in the Life" project, and a "Genius Hour" process.  Through these projects, students learn novel content for authentic purposes.  They learn about themselves and reflect on their personal development of the “Habits of Mind.”  Projects lead to wondering.  Wondering leads to engagement.  Engagement is a requisite for real learning.

As described on the Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted (SENG) website, “…The process of identity development in intellectually gifted children and adolescents is complicated by their innate and acquired differences from age-peers. To be valued within a peer culture which values conformity, gifted young people may mask their giftedness and develop alternative identities which are perceived as more socially acceptable... Gifted children and adolescents need the opportunity to work and socialize with others of similar abilities and interests if they are to grow towards self-acceptance.”

Our new pull-out model provides consistent, meaningful opportunities for students to connect with intellectual peers.  Through Socratic Seminars and discussions analyzing complex issues, students will learn about one another and themselves.The instructional design of our lessons, however, will be flexible.  As differentiation guru Carol Ann Tomlinson reminds us, gifted “…adolescents share common affective needs, but experience them in differing ways.”  One size won’t fit all, nor should it.  Students will be in the driver’s seat for this new High Potential Seminar.

Adolescence is a tumultuous and vivid time in the life of a gifted child.  Minnetonka has reinvigorated and expanded its middle school programming to more fully support the intellectual, social, and emotional development of our High Potential students.