You’ve long thought your child was special and now the school district has confirmed it. You’ve received a letter telling you that your child has qualified for the gifted program. But what exactly does that mean? The State of California Department of Education has a link to answer frequently asked questions about GATE programs, but here’s a quick overview.
Many districts no longer provide an IQ number after testing; instead, the score is reported as a percentile. For example, if you’re told your child scored in the 98.4th percentile, that would mean that she performed better than 984 other students out of every 1000 tested. The tests are typically normed nationally, so the district doesn’t have to actually test 1000 students to determine your child’s score. Some tests only cover spatial relationships, while others include language ability. You need to check with your school to find out what kind of test was used. There’s really no way to study for these tests because they’re not knowledge-based, but some logic-problem-solving methods can be learned and might be helpful, depending on the test.
Ideally, your child will be placed in a classroom with other gifted and talented students, overseen by an experienced teacher. Perhaps even by one of the few teachers trained to meet not just academic, but also emotional needs of these quirky, challenging youngsters. The curriculum may be – should be -- differentiated from the ‘regular’ classroom in terms of depth, complexity, novelty, and acceleration. This next section has definitions for the teacher jargon typically associated with a GATE program. It’s important to understand what each method of instruction is meant to be since, in my experience, some teachers use the terms without actually using the method.
If you’re interested in more details, accelerated teaching means the material is covered much more quickly than in a ‘regular’ class. Once the majority of students understand the lesson, the class moves on. The material won’t be shortchanged, but your child should no longer complain of sitting bored while the teacher repeats the same concept over and over.
Compacting is another means of ‘accelerating’ the curriculum. Any child scoring well on a pre-test is excused from having to cover the material again. Typically such a child is then given one of three options:
1) continuing to move through the curriculum at her own pace,
2) working on enrichment in the same content area to deepen her understanding, or
3) selecting an area of high interest to her, for independent study.
Which options are offered will depend on the attitude of the teacher, the number of students in the class, maturity level of the individual student, and the student’s needs. In an ideal world, neither teacher attitude nor class size would matter, but they do have a large impact on the program that’s provided.
One of the most popular strategies to use with GATE students is the Socratic Seminar. In the San Diego Unified School District, Socratic Seminar is defined as: “A highly structured process in which students seek a more in-depth understanding of complex ideas through rigorously thoughtful dialogue instead of memorizing bits of information or meeting arbitrary demands for simple ‘coverage’ of a topic. Socratic Seminar is not to be confused with… simple group discussion or sharing of options rather than ideas.”
If you’re interested in more details
Other strategies include:
➢ Learning Centers – Students explore topics or practice skills, preferably at greater depth than in standard lessons; not typically used in the upper grades.
➢ Tiered Lessons – All students cover the same concepts, but lessons are individualized based on the needs of each student;
➢ Problem Based Learning – Students are provided with a real-world problem, which they then explore through creating a hypothesis, researching to find information, and developing solutions.
➢ Independent Study – More mature students work with teachers / mentors to investigate an area of interest to the student, creating some product that will demonstrate the student’s knowledge.
➢ Taba Questioning – uses questioning to lead students from factual understanding through inductive reasoning, to deductive reasoning and evaluation.
➢ Icons for Depth and Complexity – Based on eleven “tools” one needs to master in order to have a true command of a subject. For depth: language of the discipline, big idea, essential details, rules, patterns, trends, unanswered questions, and ethics. For complexity: change over time, multiple points of view, and connections across the disciplines. (NOT A NOUN PHRASE LIKE THE OTHERS) Pictographs help students keep these tools in mind as while learning.
➢ Lawrence Kohlberg – Developed a theory for how moral reasoning develops. Lessons have students think about and discuss moral dilemmas, with the goal of reaching a realization that universal ethical principles exist and should be applied to real-world problems.
No classroom can incorporate all strategies all the time. The right strategy for one student may not work for another and the teaching style of the instructor also has to be taken into account. But any strong program for the gifted should include a great deal of questioning and reasoning. As Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner wrote in Teaching as a Subversive Activity, “Once you have learned how to ask questions – relevant and appropriate and substantial questions – you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know.” And that’s where you need to start – by asking questions of your child’s school:
•If your child scored in the 99.9th percentile, she is considered profoundly gifted. Does the school have a program specifically for the profoundly gifted? (In San Diego Unified the program is called “Seminar”. Class size is limited to 20-25 students (the number is in flux due to budget crisis).)
•What model does the school use for GATE classes? Homogeneous – all students are identified as gifted. Cluster – between 25% and 50% are identified as gifted. Individual GATE Plans (IGPs) – written for each student.
o If the model is Cluster, what percentage is GATE-identified and how are the non-identified students selected?
o If the model is IGPs, who will monitor the student’s progress? And how do the expectations of the IGP relate to the work required by teachers who are not monitoring the IGP?
•How many students are in a GATE class? How does this compare with a regular class?
•What training has the teacher had in gifted education?
o Was the training provided by the district or does she have a GATE credential?
o How long has she been teaching gifted classes?
You won’t be able to change the answers you get to these questions, but the information will help you understand what to expect as your child progresses through the year. Schools aren’t required to provide special programs for gifted students, but if they do, then the State of California has standards specifically for GATE programs. These standards must be adhered to if the districts want to continue to receive funding from the state for those programs. So if you feel like your child’s needs aren’t being met, check the standards out first and then approach the teacher. See what she has to say. Most of the public school teachers I worked with are quite open about listening to parental concerns and addressing them whenever possible.
Of course, the challenge is determining when difficulties may lie with the instruction or with a child’s adjustment to a more rigorous program. But that’s a different article.
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