Do You AHA!?
Day 2 of the AEN Summer Conference featured Dr. Joyce Juntune speaking on GT education. After many of these conferences, one could easily to slip into a mindset of "been here, heard this". And certainly there has been little change in the basics. But, Dr. Juntune challenged us at one point to look for the Aha! And once you are reminded of the basics (because they bear repeating), there is always an Aha!
Some of the Aha! moments for me from
Dr. Juntune's presentation:
If we use a non-verbal means to identify GT, then our program needs to also be non-verbal for these student to succeed
Gifted children in poverty may have a more simple, or broken, language structure than expected for a GT student due to the lack of conversation in the home during early years while parents work
The higher the sudent's IQ the bigger the gaps may be as they make jumps to make connections
A sense of independence comes with intelligence, so this need for independence shows up in GT sooner than average
Math should be about concepts, not computing
Most Difficult First
Don't have choices reserved for the GT learner, but have them available
You think best when you think on your own first
Some of these topics want to simmer and resurface. Aha!
