- Most of gifted students' time is spent in regular classrooms with diverse academic abilities, making differentiation challenging.
- Classroom-level collaboration helps manage differentiation effectively, providing tools for gifted students to learn advanced content.
- Gifted education teachers can work with classroom teachers to create resources and strategies for ongoing support.
- Collaboration extends beyond the classroom, building understanding of gifted students' needs among various educational staff.
- It supports equitable access to gifted programs, particularly for underrepresented groups, through partnerships with administrators, instructional leaders, and ESL teachers.
- Collaboration enhances school efforts for student intervention and redefines roles for providing services, without replacing specialized support for gifted learners.
As Tomlinson describes, differentiated instruction is "Teaching with the child in mind."
Differentiated instruction refers to the approach of tailoring teaching strategies, student activities, and other elements of instruction according to the individual needs of students.
Content – the specific information that is to be taught in the lesson/unit/course of instruction.
Process – how the student will acquire the content information.
Product – how the student will demonstrate understanding of the content.
Learning Environment – the environment where learning is taking place including physical location and/or student grouping
Sandbox Reflection: What strategies for collaboration among gifted educators and general education teachers have been effective in your experience?