Gifted and Talented Advocates

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Gifted and Talented Advocates
Sarah Kasprowicz President, Wisconsin
Association for the Talented and
Gifted kasprowiczs_at_merton.k12.wi.us
watgpresident_at_gmail.com
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Topics

• Roadblocks to differentiation
• Training students to operate efficiently in a
  differentiated classroom
• Management Strategies
• Grading Issues
• Working with colleagues and district staff
• Communicating with parents

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Road Blocks

• Teacher Training
• Fear of chaos
• Time to work with multiple groups
• Student behavior
• Grading practices
• Others?

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Teacher Training

• Classes about meeting the needs of gifted
  students are not required to earn a teaching
  license.
• The vast majority of classroom teachers were not
  taught how to differentiate for gifted students
  in their university education courses.
• Chapter 35 Special Ed class

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Benefit of the Doubt

• Teachers want to help the children in their
  classroom.
• Teachers were taught in college how to meet the
  needs of students with learning disabilities and
  why it is important.
• Given the benefit of the doubtteachers will do
  the same for gifted students when they are
  informed about gifted education.

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Training My Students

• Responding to Roadblocks
• Fear of chaos
• Time to work with all students
• Student behavior.

I include differentiation as a classroom
expectation on the first day of school in fifth
grade.
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Hooray for Miss Bonkers!

• Read Hooray for Diffendoofer Day by Dr.Seuss and
  Jack Prelutsky
• Discuss the differences between Diffendoofer
  School and Flobbertown

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Points for Discussion

• Differentiation is
• Fair
• Appropriate
• Up to the students to handle it and do their
  job
• More interesting than Flobbertown
• Class, everyone turn to page 14 number 3
• Everyone on the same page, all of the time
• No choice

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Points for Discussion

• Differentiation looks like
• At any one time there could be students working
  in any of the following situations
• Whole class
• Alone at a desk
• In the library with a partner or small group
• At a classroom computer

ALL COMBINATIONS ARE RESPECTFUL TO EACH OTHER AND
THE CLASSROOM CULTURE OF DIFFERENTIATION
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Management Strategies

• Expectation of Differentiated Curriculum
• Fair
• Normal
• Makes sense
• If a student abuses the situation or can not
  adjust to working in an alternate setting they
  can be returned to the regular class and make up
  what they missed.

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Management Strategies

• Teach students to recognize signals and
  transitions
• Time Management
• Calendars
• Work / Project logs
• Classroom Management
• Alternate project documents and work logs are
  stapled to the wall or posted on my website for
  easy viewing and management
• Students need to be respectful and not disrupt
  the teacher or other students

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Handle It!(Ultimate Strategy)

• Each student knows that the class needs to be
  able to handle the differentiation in order for
  us to continue with multiple activities at once.
• Students help each other and police each other to
  make sure no one is disruptive or causing a
  breakdown in the system.
• If a student cant handle it, then they return to
  the regular class for the current project and are
  given another chance to work on an alternate
  project next time.

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Reasons for System Breakdown

• The project was not a good match for the student.
• The student needs more background knowledge on
  study skills and self-monitoring.
• The partner or small group dynamics of the
  alternate project could not work independently.
  Next time the students are either placed with
  other partners, or the group is given more
  instruction on group dynamics and responsibility
  before proceeding with a new topic.

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My Classroom

• Merton Community School District (Waukesha
  County)
• 5th and 6th Grade Looping
• 21 students
• 11 students on our districts Strengths List
• 1 student with an IEP for a language-based
  learning disability
• I teach all subjects except social studies I
  switch with another teacher for science and
  social studies.

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Example

• Fifth Grade Reading / Language Arts
• Taylor Working on her R-Word website and pledge
  campaign
• Henry Working on his video blog about
  skateboarding
• Gabby and Jorja are working on their blogs and
  news articles for our district website.
• 17 students having literature circle meetings
  with Mrs. K circulating and listening
• 1 student working with our LD teacher on language
  arts

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Flexible Grouping

• Interest (Taylor and Henry)
• Past performance on reading assessments (Jorja
  and Gabby)
• Students are allowed to sometimes pass on
  alternate projects

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Modify Our Grading Practices

• Responding to Roadblocks
• Grading
• Fear of chaos
• Time to work with all students
• Time to do anythinganything at all! ?

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Grading Issues

• Release Yourself!
• Teachers dont need to
• Fill in each space in our grade book
• Assign practice that some
• students dont need
• Manage every detail
• Create every project
• Write every rubric
• Collaborate with your students, another teacher
  or find a rubric online to use or modify to fit
  your purpose.

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Recording Grades

• GT students will have fewer grades.
• GT students are excused from daily work grades.
• GT students will have scores for
• Pretests
• Post-tests
• Alternate projects

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Grade Book Tips

• Leave the excused boxes BLANK.
• Use different colors of ink to code tiered
  assignments and projects.
• Use Webgrader features to assign students to
  assignments and excuse students from daily work.
• Keep a separate class list in your grade book to
  keep track of alternate project grades

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Colleagues and District Staff

• Communicate classroom needs to
• Librarian and library staff
• Technology department
• Principal
• Gifted and Talented Coordinator
• Curriculum Coordinator
• Team members There are possible partners for
  your students in other homerooms
• Parents

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Communicating With Parents

• Parent / Teacher Conferences
• Feedback from parents on possible interests and
  strengths of their child
• Webnotes
• Email
• Ask parents to sign proposed alternate project
  descriptions, calendar, rubrics before students
  participate
• Ask parent volunteers to work with small groups
  in the library or computer lab

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Setting the Stage in Your School

• The Pyramids
• Wisconsin Pyramid Model for Gifted and Talented
  Programming
• Response to Intervention (RtI)

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RTI
GT
In Addition
Instead
District Curriculum Tier I and Level 1 All
students experience differentiated lessons
Level 2
Tier 2
Level 3
Tier 3
Tier 2
IEP
DEP
Universal Screening
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Setting the Stage in Your School

• The GT Advocate Model
• Classroom-based
• Gifted and Talented Student Strengths Lists
• Several years of professional development

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GT Advocate Activities

• Press Room website
• Meet with teachers during their prep
• Meet with students during the day to design
  alternate projects

• Communicate needs to our GT Coordinator
• Monitor Strengths list and match opportunities to
  students
• Publish GT Advocate Updates

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Ideas for Advocates

• Send links
• Offer to collaborate on project/rubric design
• E-mails asking if teachers are concerned about
  students
• Offer to attend parent/teacher conferences

• E-mail students directly
• Share differentiated units/curriculum you are
  using and offer to help modify for different
  grade levels

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Ideas for Advocates

• Be available before or after school to share
  information, resources, handouts from conferences
• Ask your principal to cover your class while you
  meet with staff or students

• Teach a class in your district
• Create an online class and share access with your
  teachers
• Hire subs for collaborative planning time

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Friday Projects

• Responding to Roadblocks
• Fear of chaos
• Time to work with all students

• Advantage
• Solves the problem of Im done. What do I do
  now?

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Web 2.0 Collaboration Expression

• Google Sites
• Voice Thread
• Skype
• Forums
• Wikis
• Blogs

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Staff Development

• A paradigm shift is needed from pull out to
  classroom based approach. This can take years.
• University Courses
• District initiative
• CESA
• Conferences
• Consultants

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Setting the Stage in the Community

• The Press Room
• The Merton Community School District Press Room
  is a district-wide opportunity to integrate all
  subject areas and involve students K-8 in
  promoting and publishing the work of Merton
  students.
• Press Room Website

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More Details Needed?

• What are your questions?
• What kind of resources do you have available?

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Thank You!

• Questions?
• Please feel free to contact me.
• Sarah Kasprowicz
• WATG President
• watgpresident_at_gmail.com
• kasprowiczs_at_merton.k12.wi.us