Teaching Students with Exceptional Verbal Ability

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Teaching Students with Exceptional Verbal Ability

• Andrew Payne
• Parallel Workshop
• CTYI Conference, 23 February 2008

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My work in CTYI

• Instructor at various age groups
• 13-16 year olds
• 3 week summer course in Journalism
• 8-12 year olds
• 9 week Saturday and 1 week summer classes in
  Journalism and Media Studies
• 6-7 year olds
• 9 week Saturday and 1 week summer classes in
  Media Studies
• Tutor for CTYIs correspondence course in
  Journalism
• Prior to my time as an instructor I worked as a
  teaching assistant for 2 summers

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Teaching students with exceptional verbal ability

• The one key piece of advise I would give from my
  experiences working with students of exceptional
  verbal ability is
• Guidance rather than dictation
• The teachers job should in my view be to help
  guide the child towards their own understanding
  and thought, not to dictate thought to them.

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Main observations from my work with students with
these skills

• Engaging with children
• Importance of critical thought
• Academic development should compliment rather
  than be at the expense of personal development

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Engaging with Children

• Importance of discussion while teaching
• - I find that students engage better with
  topics when you discuss their ideas and
  thoughts with them as you go along, feeding them
  new information as you go.
• Explore childrens own views
• Importance of hands on involvement

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Importance of critical thought

• Vitally important for children with exceptional
  verbal ability
• Relative absence in school and Leaving Cert
• - Tendency for students to learn pre- prepared
  critical evaluations of eg. English/History
  rather than being given the information and
  guidance to develop their own analysis
• - Arts can be blunted for students through lack
  of critical engagement

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Importance of critical thought

• Helping students develop their own powers of
  critical thought can be very rewarding for
  teachers
• - Just last week one of my former CTYI students
  was in the paper talking about a campaign she is
  running at 17 to make newspapers more aware of
  the way they portray teens!

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Academic development and personal development
hand in hand

• Important to remember these are normal children!
• - Students tend not to like portrayal of
  themselves as in someway unusual, nerdy or
  giving up their summers in CTYI
• Academic development and personal development
  should be mutually empowering for students
• Need to develop individual understandings with
  students and break stereotypes

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Academic development and personal development
hand in hand

• Important for students to have a childhood!
• - Outstanding ability should not be used to
  rush 16 year olds to college
• - Their abilities should help inform them and
  develop them growing up, not bypass childhood

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Conclusion

• Children with exceptional verbal ability may not
  be properly challenged when learning purely by
  rote
• Engage with students own views on topics
• Help students develop their own critical
  abilities
• Guidance rather than dictation
• Remember these are normal children!