Best Practice for Gifted Learners in a Social Studies Classroom
(From the book Best Practices in Gifted Education by Ann Robinson, Bruce M. Shore and Donna L. Enerson)
- Incorporate primary sources
- Provide students opportunities to think and write like historians
- Use a transformation approach to teaching which emphasizes higher level thinking about the conditions leading to events, the cause and effect relationships and the analysis and evaluation of source material rather than an aquisition of knowledge approach.
- Present many different sources so gifted learners can understand the relationships among facts and events from the different sources.
- By looking at different sources, students can generate their own hypothesis about historical events and develop an argument based on evidence. They will also be able to evaluate their credibility and write convincingly.
- Encourage students to look at the source of the document before reading it and to consider the bias or the perspective of the writer.
- Provide complex, open-ended problems.
Books
- Differentiating Instructions With Menus (6th-8th) - Social Studies By Laurie E. Westphal (This book is great because it has prepared menus by genre and for writing mechanics, story maps for novels and rubrics.)
- Taskmasters! Performance Tasks for High Ability Middle School Students - Language Arts By Carolyn Stamm (This book is recommended by the Alabama Department of Education Gifted Coordinator)
- Rigor and Engagement for Growing Minds - Strategies that Enable High-Ability Learners to Flourish in All Classrooms By Bertie Kingore (I have heard her speak and all her ideas are fabulous!)
Websites
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/social_studies.htm