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RTI ideas for Gifted and Talented Learners
Possibilities:
RTI can supplement but NOT replace a systematic program of services for students with high abilities.
When all students are assessed, include provisions for assessing strengths as well as deficits.
An RTI structure permits flexibility between tiers of supports so that individual needs for additional challenge may be addressed.
In teacher training for RTI, characteristics of all learners should be incorporated, including those of the gifted.
Through RTI, teachers address needs of gifted students with learning disabilities.
Cautionary notes:
RTI systems are rarely implemented effectively for gifted learners
When any system is said to include identification and services for ALL children, then some interpret that to mean that training, identification and services specific to the needs of gifted students are no longer needed. This is not true.
Teachers who have gifted students in their classes need professional development in gifted education.
Educators need to measure, not what students know, understand and are able to do relative to their age peers, but rather what they have learned during their time in the classroom.
Gifted students learn and should not be expected to wait for their age peers to catch up. They may spend from three to six years of their school lives learning nothing new. (Rogers 2002).
Tier 1: The most important Tier 1 strategy for Gifted or Advanced Learners is
Differentiated Instruction.
The key principles of Differentiated Instruction are:
Student-centered instructional practices and materials are standards-based and grounded in research;
Instruction has clear objectives with focused activities to reach the objectives;
Assessment results are used to shape future instructional decisions;
Students have multiple avenues to show mastery of essential content and skills, and to demonstrate their learning; and
Instructional pacing, depth and complexity are varied
Tier 2: Strategic Targeted Instruction - Most identified GT learners
Tier 3: Intensive Targeted Intervention - a handful of identified GT learners
NOTES ON EXCEPTIONALLY GIFTED STUDENTS: Research has repeatedly found that these children differ quite significantly from moderately gifted age-peers on many cognitive and affective variables. Because of this, it is not enough to place them in part-time programs, such as a resource room or pull-out, which are designed for moderately gifted students; they require full-time grouping with children closer to their own mental age and levels of socio-affective development. Research suggests that exceptionally and profoundly gifted students are best served by a program of radical acceleration incorporating a number of grade-skips appropriately spaced through the student's school career, supplemented with subject acceleration where it is required. It is important that the student is also provided with lateral enrichment at each stage. Radical acceleration provides the extremely gifted child with the intellectual and social companionship of children at similar stages of cognitive and affective development. Exceptionally gifted children retained with age-peers, or accelerated by only one year, are at serious risk of peer rejection and social isolation. It is now generally understood and accepted that a child's level of social and emotional development is more highly correlated with his mental age than with his chronological age (Callahan & Kauffman, 1982; Tannenbaum, 1983; Janos & Robinson, 1985). The significance of this is immense when dealing with the extremely gifted since the higher the IQ, the greater the discrepancy between chronological and mental age, and thus the wider the gap between the psychosocial development of the gifted child and that of his age-peers.
The common perception of the extremely gifted as eager, academically successful young people who display high levels of task commitment has been refuted by research which demonstrates that many highly gifted children underachieve seriously in the regular classroom, and that, by the end of elementary school, many have almost completely lost the motivation to excel (Pringle, 1970; Painter, 1976; Whitmore, 1980; Gross & Feldhusen, 1990).
NOTES ON TWICE EXCEPTIONAL STUDENTS: Gifted students with disabilities are at risk because their educational and social/emotional needs often go undetected. The resulting inconsistent academic performance can lead educators to believe twice- exceptional students are not putting forth adequate effort. Hidden disabilities may prevent students with advanced cognitive abilities from achieving their potential. The frustrations related to unidentified strengths and disabilities can result in behavioral and social/emotional issues. For some twice- exceptional students, behavior plans become the focus of their interventions. The behaviors are managed, but the underlying disabilities are never addressed. School can become a very frustrating experience for struggling twice-exceptional students, their teachers, and parents.
The defining characteristics of the twice-exceptional learner is evidence of high performance or potential in a gift, talent or ability combined with a disability that suppresses the student’s ability to achieve according to his/her potential (Brody & Mills, 1997). Disabilities may include dyslexia, auditory processing problems, visual processing deficits, emotional behavioral disabilities, ADD or ADHD, and autism.
Twice-exceptional students will be found in all three Tiers and will need interventions that will differ from interventions for students who have disabilities but who are not gifted or of high ability. Individual student data may show exceptional ability in one area and a weakness that is an extreme disparity for the individual, even if the weakness is demonstrated at age-grade level.
Researchers have offered suggestions of how many gifted and learning-disabled students are present in the United States. Winner (1996) estimated that between 120,000 and 180,000 students with learning disabilities also have above-average intelligence quotients (IQ). Winner also noted that approximately 10 percent of high-IQ students read two or more years below grade level.
Some researchers estimate that 2–10 percent of all students enrolled in gifted programs also have a learning disability (McEachern & Bornot, 2001), while others predict that the actual number is closer to two to five percent of the nation’s gifted population (Delisle & Galbraith, 2002).
Ongoing collaboration among special, general and gifted education, and parents is critical for identification and long-term planning for these students. It is essential that the disabilities are identified early so appropriate interventions can be provided at optimum times. Unfortunately, the struggles of many twice-exceptional students go unnoticed for many years, resulting in learning gaps and undeveloped potentials.

Sources:
http://opi.mt.gov/pub/RTI/Resources/RTI_Gifted_Talented.pdf
http://www.d118.org/district/curriculum/gifted/RtI-and-Gifted-Education.pdf
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