Resources for Teachers

The state of Iowa mandates AND funds gifted education. Below are resources on State Guidance and National Standards, the Program Components of a gifted program, Strategies and Approaches for Instruction, Social-Emotional Needs of Gifted Learners & Partnering with School Counselors, Personalized Education Plans, and a video that presents a Student Perspective. Contact ITAG ([email protected]) if you have a question that is not answered on these pages.

State Guidance and National Standards

• Iowa Laws, Rules, and Legislation for Gifted and Talented Education
• NAGC’s 2019 Pre-K-Grade 12 Gifted Education Programming Standards
  
  

Program Components: Identification, Testing and Assessment, Program Services, & Program Evaluation

Identification

The process of identifying a student for a district’s gifted and talented program is determined by the district. Check your district’s website or visit with the gifted teacher to learn more about the identification process in your district. Although there is local determination of identification procedures, all districts operate within Iowa Administrative Code 281.59, Gifted and Talented Programs. 281.59(5) for Student identification criteria and procedures.

Some common assessments and observations for identification are:

• CogAT. See the research on CogAT from Dr. David Lohman and Dr. Joni Lakin on local norms, nonverbal assessments, and universal screening to increase representations of minority, EL, and low-income students in gifted and talented programs.
• Using local norms for identification- see the work of Dr. Scott Peters
• ISASP
• Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking
• HOPE rating scales for equitable identification
• Some ideas for identification from a New to TAG Conversation with ITAG’s Educator Outreach Committee:
  Identification Process Overview, Renzulli Behavioral Rating Scale, Teacher Observance Checklist A, Teacher Observance Checklist B, Things My Child Likes to Do

Testing & Assessment- Overviews

• Section on Assessment at iowacore.gov https://iowacore.gov/content/gifted-resources
• Formative vs. Summative Assessment (Yale, Indiana, ASCD, Edutopia, Iowa DE)
• Tests & Assessment at NAGC
• From the ITAG 2020 Summer Weekly Mailings
  • Using Iowa Core Standards to Guide Instruction with Unpacking Standards Visual
  • Using Formative Assessments to Determine Student Learning Needs. Resources shared in the ITAG mailing included the following:
    • Pre-Assessment Learning Circuit
    • Pivoting Instruction
  • Creating a Pre-Assessment from a Post-Assessment. Resources shared in the ITAG mailing included the following:
    • Differentiation: It Starts with Pre-Assessment by Emily Pendergrass
    • Does Pre-Assessment Work? By Thomas Guskey
    • Kaplan’s Depth and Complexity Tools
    • Promoting a Positive Achievement Attitude with Gifted and Talented Learners, summary of book chapter by Del Siegle and Besty McCoach at Davidson Institute
  • Planning Instructional Strategies with the MTSS Advanced Learner Guide
• Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page
• Buros Center for Testing at the University of Nebraska
  
  

Services in the Gifted Program

What does it mean to serve gifted students?

• What It Means to Teach Gifted Learners Well by Carol Ann Tomlinson
• Serving Gifted Students in Gen Ed Classrooms – Edutopia
• Uppervention: Meeting the Needs of Gifted and Talented Students – Edutopia

Some ideas for programming in the gifted program from a New to TAG Conversation with ITAG’s Educator Outreach Committee:

• Project ideas
• The Autonomous Learner Model provides a framework to work with all ages of gifted and talented students. Through Explorations, Investigations, and In-Depth Studies, gifted and talented students passions are respected and recognized.(See also the Lunch Bunch Questionnaire- ALM.)
  
• Iowa BIG
• Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a great way to offer extensions, enrichment, and an autonomous learning focused course or seminar for high school GT students. They are free online courses available for anyone to enroll. The wide variety of course options let the students lead their own learning. If using edx.org or Coursera, remember to click on the free course not the certificate
  • Edx.org
    • They have choices in almost any interest area. Great for practicing what online college may be like!
    • Make sure you audit the course so it is free.
    • By selecting self-paced or archived you can start at anytime
  • Coursera is similar to edx.org
  • Khan Academy offers practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard.
    • You get to move at your own pace.
    • Can help extend your learning in the classes you are enrolled in this year
    • Varied Content Selections, including Math, Science, Computing, Arts and Humanities, Test Prep for the SAT, AP courses
  • Stanford Online– There are also online offerings from Stanford University, Stanford Online offers self-paced and session based courses. While Coursera features some courses from Stanford, many classes are only available via this site. Some courses require iTunes, but most are completed in your web browser. There is a topic selection tool on the left hand side of this Main Page Search
  • Open Yale Courses– Open Yale Courses offers courses only open from Yale. Open Yale Courses offers many videos of actual campus lectures. The availability of videos makes the site a great option if you’re looking for quality courses, but learn better by watching than by reading.
• Content-specific sites
  • Science
    • Zooniverse– Discover, teach, learn – Zooiverse enables everyone to take part in real cutting edge research in many fields across the sciences. We are even using this for students to get virtual service hours.
    • Science Buddies– You can select a project to work on from a wide variety of choices. You can select your grade levels and pick a focus area so it can easily be used by any multi-grade GT facilitator. These can be done in a classroom or virtually. They can be done to have students prepare for a science fair too. There is an ask an expert section that you can also search by grade level. There is a science blog link and information on science careers.
  • Art
    • Free classes from the MOMA through Coursera
    • Google Arts and Culture has content from over 1,200 museums. The page gives you today’s picks, search options for games, places, museums, artworks, and collections.

See ideas for Secondary Resources compiled by ITAG Past-President Lora Duffy Danker

Program Evaluation

• Iowa Administrative Code Chapter 59 [281--59.4(6)] requires an annual review and evaluation of public schools’ gifted and talented programs. A talented and gifted program evaluation involves collecting data which will be used by decision makers to enhance the services offered to gifted students.
• Program evaluation examples
  • For support in facilitating the Gifted Self-Audit & Planner (G-SAP) process in your district, please contact Kyra Wilcox-Conley ([email protected]) or Kate Boonstra ([email protected]) from Heartland AEA
  • NAGC guide to assessing your program

Strategies and Approaches for Instruction

Differentiation

• From ITAG 2020 Summer Weekly Mailings
  • Using Tiered Lesson Plans as a Differentiation Strategy. Additional resources shared in this mailing include the following.
    • Bloom/Marzano/Webb Crosswalk
    • Instructional Checklists for Tiering
    • Tiered Lesson Plan Template Using Marzano
  • Strategies for Differentiation: Curriculum Compacting and Contracts. Additional resources shared in this mailing include the following.
    • Examples of Compactor Forms
      • Curriculum Compacting: A systematic Procedure for Modifying the Curriculum for Above Average Ability Students by Sally Reis and Joseph Renzulli
      • Individual Educational Programming Guide: The Compactor
    • Other resources
      • Providing Curriculum Alternatives to Motivate Gifted Students by Susan Winebrenner and Sandra Berger
• What differentiation is and is not– infographic by Tomlinson, from ASCD
• Chapter by Tomlinson on What Differentiation Is and Is Not from How to Differentiate Instruction in Academically Diverse Classrooms, 3rd Edition by Carol Ann Tomlinson
• Challenges and Possibilities for Serving Gifted Learners in the Regular Classroom 
• Differentiated Instruction Resources from ASCD

Academic Acceleration

• See the Acceleration Institute at the Belin-Blank Center for a comprehensive coverage of acceleration from the types of acceleration, to sample acceleration policies, to a synthesis of acceleration research in A Nation Empowered.

Enrichment

• Renzulli Learning

Grouping for Instruction

Strategies for Grouping Students for Instruction. Additional resources include the following.

• Cluster Grouping Fact Sheet: How to Provide Full-Time Services for Gifted Students on Existing Budgets
• Grouping Gifted Children, a collection of resources from Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page
• NAGC Position Statement on Grouping
• Flexible grouping (Wisconsin Department of Education)

Social-emotional needs of gifted learners

• General resources
  • Addressing the Social-Emotional-Behavioral Health (Equity) Plan. Additional resources include the following.
    • From NAGC
      • Nurturing Social and Emotional Development of Gifted Children Position Paper
      • Serving the Whole Gifted Child (NAGC Parent Tip Sheet)
      • National Standards in Gifted and Talented Education: Pre-K to Grade 12
      • Gifted Programming Standards
        • Standard 1: Learning and Development
    • Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted (see also the SENG Library)
    • Profiles of Gifted Children Matrix (Neihart & Betts, 2010)
    • The Intensities of Giftedness
  • Gifted Learners’ Social Emotional Needs from Byrdseed
  • NAGC position paper: Nurturing Social and Emotional Development of Gifted Children
  • Exploring the Social and Emotional Aspects of Gifted Children (link to SENG article by D. Lovecky)
  • Social Emotional Needs (link to an Australian government article)
  • SEL 3 Signature Practices Playbook from CASEL
• Asynchronous development
  • Asynchronous Development, an NAGC Parent TIP Sheet
  • Asynchrony and X-Men from Byrdseed
  • Many Ages at Once, a Psychology Today article from L. Rivero
• Impostor syndrome
  • The Curious Case of Impostor Syndrome from Byrdseed
  • The Implications of the Imposter Syndrome (from a Texas gifted conference)
  • I’m Just Not Smart Anymore: Imposter Syndrome and Gifted Students from Teach Better

Partnering with School Counselors

• The School Counselor and Gifted and Talented Student Programs from the American School Counselor Association
• Bailey, C. L. (2007, October). Social and emotional needs of gifted students: What school counselors need to know to most effectively serve this diverse student population. Paper based on a program presented at the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision Conference, Columbus, OH.
• School Counseling- Gifted Kids Need It Too (Episode 43 of the Mind Matters Podcast)
• Counseling Gifted and Talented Students by Dr. Nicholas Colangelo

Personalized Education Plans

PEPs are presented in Iowa Administrative Code 281.59(4). The section reads as follows.

59.5(4) Personalized education plan. Best practice dictates that the services provided for each student placed in a gifted and talented program be contained in a written, personalized gifted and talented plan. Personalized education plans should be in writing and reviewed at periodic intervals in accordance with the changing needs of the student. The following items are suggested for inclusion in a student’s personalized education plan, but this is neither a mandatory nor an exhaustive list:

1. Relevant background data, assessment of present needs and projections for future needs. Relevant information may include the student’s leadership ability, interest inventories, learning characteristics, and learning goals.
2. The nature and extent of the gifted and talented services provided to the student, including indirect services, such as consultative services or other supportive assistance provided to a regular classroom teacher. Other services may include modifications to curriculum and acceleration of the student’s curriculum.
3. Personnel responsible for the services provided to the student, as well as those responsible for monitoring and evaluating the student’s progress.

These PEP examples are provided for informational purposes only. Examples provided from outside Iowa may not conform to Iowa’s gifted and talented code. Examples provided from Iowa districts may not address the needs of your district.

• • How to Create a Gifted Individualized Education Plan
  • Keokuk CSD (Iowa)