Daria Doering

Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom

By Susan Winebrenner

This book was such an eye-opener.  It is a must-read for all teachers, and parents of bright kids.  Winebrenner begins with the thought-provoking assertion that out of the range of ability levels in a given classroom, it is the most able who will learn less than any other group.  She tells a story that illustrates this point.  A teacher in one of her workshops had been pleased that many of her students did so well and got “A’s.”  After Winebrenner’s workshop she began to have doubts about whether this represented true learning.  So she gave her next unit test to the “A” group before teaching the unit.  To her chagrin, her “A” students still aced the test.  It became clear to her that her teaching was not responsible for their good grades.  In fact, it was questionable whether they were learning anything at all.  They were coasting off their memories, not learning new material.

Winebrenner points out that substantial time and money is spent on struggling students, while if anything is done to accommodate gifted students, it is often considered “elitist.”  She quotes a poem by Richard Brautigan in which he laments all the learning time stolen from him by his teachers in having him do things he already knew, and compares his teachers to Jesse James.  Thereafter she refers to gifted children not being challenged as the “Jessie James Syndrome.”  The thesis of the book is that every child deserves to be learning new content and working on projects that require effort at all times.

In fact if gifted students are not challenged, it creates very real problems.  These include gifted kids becoming habituated to all learning being easy for them, and concluding that “effort” is a threat to their self-image of smartness, which then can lead to underachievement.  Another danger is perfectionism, to which gifted students may be prone to already, as they linger over non-challenging tasks.  Additionally the surest path to self-esteem is to succeed at something difficult.  When gifted kids aren’t challenged, their self-esteem and motivation to work drop.  Lastly, the “behavior problems” presented by some gifted kids is often a resistance to doing work they have already mastered.

Her solution is compaction and differentiation of the curriculum for gifted students.  The way this work is for teachers to offer a pretest to all students who are interested before every unit.  The pretest consists of a version of the unit end test.  If students get 80% or higher, they are exempted from instruction on the unit, and may spend their time on “extension activities” in the same subject area.  Most of the book consists of teaching ideas for compaction, differentiation and extension in all subject areas, plus methods for keeping track of differentiated student work.

Lastly, the book discusses and validates all of my own “pet peeves” regarding how gifted students are treated.  Winebrenner says that:

• Gifted students should not be forced to work in heterogeneous cooperative learning groups all the time.  Although such groups need some strong students in them, gifted students do best with each other.
• Gifted students should not be “used” as tutors, in less they choose to volunteer in that capacity.
• All drill, practice, and review for students who have already mastered the target concepts should be eliminated, including homework drill and practice.