1. Teaching Diverse Students

In SPED 216, Introduction to Exceptional Children, we learned about teaching strategies for teaching students with diverse abilities and needs. Each student created a presentation with teaching strategies for different types of students. My presentation covered teaching strategies for gifted and talented students in middle school and high school.

In order to help students with varying needs, we need to understand the diversity among students and the various attributes that they can bring to our classroom. Performance indicator 1H says that the competent teacher "uses student information to design instruction that meets the diverse needs of students." Using various strategies, we are able to use student's strengths to help them to learn in ways that are best for them on an individual level. Performance indicator 1J states "The competent teacher differentiates strategies...levels of complexity...to introduce concepts and principles so that they are meaningful to students at varying levels of development." Through having strategies for gifted students, we are differentiating our teaching for their varying levels of development.

Most importantly, I learned ways in which that I can help gifted students to flourish in the general education classroom. Gifted students can often be bored in education because there are limited resources for them and students who are struggling might take more priority, but I learned about many ways in which I can help them to achieve their highest potential without leaving all the other students behind. This will most definitely come to good use in my future classroom. Being in the mathematics field, it is extremely likely that I will have gifted students throughout my time teaching. I will be able to help those students to explore mathematics in ways that they might not even think are possible!