On Going S-L-O-W in a GT class

The point was made that if I slow down my delivery to the point that even the slowest student in my class can understand, then I am hampering all of my other students. Is that really fair for me to do, especially considering I am trained in teaching GT students and am working towards my master’s in GT education?


Yes, it is. Because the underlying assumption is that if I slow down my delivery there is nothing left for the advanced students. But therein lies the beauty of TPRS. In any traditional class, during the direct instruction all the students are learning exactly the same information at the same time. Or at least, they are being exposed to the same information. The students at the top of the curve have already mastered the material, and they are now bored. The students at the bottom of the curve aren’t ready for it and they react by looking bored or uninterested. But really, they are just overwhelmed.

In a TPRS class, however, this is not true. Although the teacher is standing in the front of the room talking (sometimes), this is not direct instruction in the way we have always envisioned it. The teacher is leading a group into a collective effort, but each student is focused specifically on the information that is new to him/her. Slower processing students are focused solely on the words and trying to construct meaning. Faster processing students are focused on the underlying grammar behind the words, and how to construct meaning. Faster processing students are honored because they are often the students who can think of clever new scenarios in the stories the class is creating.

There have been a few studies that have shown that mixed level TPRS classes have been the most effective. I know that Michelle Whaley has posted about the results of her mixed level Russian classes on Ben Slavic’s blog, and Blaine Ray has referenced another teacher who had astounding results with her levels I-IV in the same class. When the vocabulary and the speed were not an issue, students could truly acquire some of the more subtle parts of the language. These kids often nail grammatical points that usually stick out as the immediate flag that a person is not a native speaker (in Spanish the use of the subjunctive, por and para, ser and estar) and they do this because “it sounds right” and because the many pop-up grammar lessons infused throughout every class stick.

As a teacher, I can pop-up anything I feel my students need to work on. So, for my slower students I pop-up, “Why did I put an –n at the end of that verb?” (It’s plural) and for my students who are beyond that I will point out that although this is an –ar verb, it ended in an –en, why is that? (It’s a plural command)

gifted education in the high school

I'm researching the state of gifted education in my district. I was shocked to see that after 5th grade, no services are provided. The idea is that the "gifted" kids will take the honors classes and the AP classes, and go to the magnet schools and get the services that way. That might work for the high achieving kids, but it leaves many of the gifted students out in the cold.

Not only does this reasoning fall short in assuming that every gifted student will take honors courses and thus receive accomodations, it falls short in at least two other critical areas.

First, in order to be able to take upper level courses, students must take lower level classes first. Thus, even if gifted students who are on the honors course route will still need to take non-honors classes first. I see this in my own classroom as would be honors students are in level one courses hammering out the basics.

Second, not every honors teacher is trained to teach gifted students or uses appropriate accomodations for these unique kids. Honors is often seen as harder, more rigorous... but not necessarily more creative, more flexible.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that honors classes as the sole outlet for gifted and talented students is not an adequate solution.

overachievers

Sometimes an assignment is exactly what it looks like and nothing more. And sometimes, gifted students need help seeing that and breaking down this huge monstrosity into a manageable project. Actually, I bet all students could use that help to a degree.

Here I sit at my computer struggling to write this paper for my class. It is this HUGE paper of epic proportions. I have to write about three people who have made significant contributions to the field of gifted education and what those contributions were. The more research I do, the more lost I feel. I can never write a cohesive paper about this - it is too big! Where do I start? How do I tie it together? In my mind, it is three research papers tied together in name only. The teacher said 3 - 5 pages, but really that won't do, she must have been underestimating...

And then comes my husband who says, it's a 3 -5 page paper. Tie it together with the introduction and the conclusion and separate the body with subject headings. Simplify it. And stop overthinking. Get off the computer, take out a piece of paper and put some form to it be it an outline or a cluster map, get it out of your head onto paper.

Duh. And suddenly, in my mind it is a manageable 7 - 10 page paper. Which is an improvement, if not accurate yet.

And that brings me back to that overachieving slacker phrase my student created. Because that's exactly what I was doing. Because I was making this so MONUMENTAL, I could not even begin.

synthesis

At my school each of the core teachers also teaches an "elective" class. This is a class which is loosely connected to our core curriculum that we are highly qualified to teach ... but which is also designed to show the students that the teachers are also lifelong learners, and to allow the students to investigate passion areas, etc. The science teacher teaches electives in forensics, herpetology, etc.

My current elective class is Ghosts and goblins in the Latin American world. We looked at the chupacabra, la llorona, and the Virgin of Guadalupe. For all of my planning, or lack thereof, I ended up with one extra day to teach than I had material. I have already had the student write and perform skits, create their own version of a legend, make annotated timelines, and create artwork. I was at a loss for what to do today. Thankfully I was in the library this morning talking about the essay I am supposedly writing for my class, and I mentioned my lack of brilliant ideas for this morning's class. And angels came singing.... or rather my friend asked me why I didn't tie in today's lesson with what the students have been doing in Language Arts - they have been studying heroes, gods and villains while reading the Trojan War. My friend and I even came up with a brilliant idea that students would create the story of Juan Diego, but from his perspective as he walked up the hill, pointing out all the allegorical items, etc. One of the things I loved about this idea was that it wasn't superficial, it was higher order thinking with purpose and that it made CONNECTIONS (one of my 5 standards) between two classes.

Well, that's not what happened when I began my class. Nope. We talked for an entire hour. I tried some PowerTeaching strategies for getting animated discussions going, and that worked well. But, the basics were, we discussed the nature of gods, heroes, villains, anti-heroes, etc. We talked about the elements in mythology. What kind of situations heroes find themselves in - does it have to be as "big" as the stuff the Greek gods put the heroes through? And then in small table groups students analyzed each of the three stories. What kind of character was the main character? etc. Finally we came back together as a big class and kind of reported out on what each of the small groups had discussed.

The class came to the conclusion that the story of the chupacabra has some factual elements and some mythological elements, and that the creature itself is a monster - it does what it does not out of maliciousness or a sense of greater good/evil, but out of a need to survive.

With the story of la Llorona, most groups went back to the original story of la Malinche. The discussions about her actions and motivations were astounding. One group decided that she was actually a hero, because she sacrificed her children for the greater good of her people - there was a prophecy that if she allowed her children to leave Mexico they would be the undoing of the Aztec people. One group decided that she was an anti-hero - she was in the same impossible situation a hero is put in, but she reverted to a lower nature by killing her children, rather than rising above it. Another group decided that her sacrificing her children came too late - that it was her betrayal of her people that had been the undoing of the Aztecs and she could not redeem her past actions. Yet another group decided that she was a monster because her ghost continues to haunt people and to steal young children.

The bell rang before we were able to conclude our discussion of the Virgin of Guadalupe, but we were in serious discussion about whether or not Juan Diego was a hero in the legendary sense of the word or not. The thought I most appreciated was that Juan Diego was a hero because he was sent on a quest by a god, he performed his tasks dutifully, even though they were difficult - an Aztec getting an audience with the bishop at that time, and that as a consequence of completing the quest he was given a new quest to fulfill. His actions redeemed the Aztecs in the minds of the Spaniards, so they saved a people, thus meeting all the qualifications of the term hero. I wish we had had more time to discuss this - maybe two years from now when I can teach the class again... :)

"overachieving slackers"

That's a quote from one of my students. I love it. So do the kids in his class.

But it's a real issue. My students tend to have such high expectations - either of themselves, or imposed on them from an authority (parents or school) - that they often cannot or choose not to live up to them.

I'm supposed to be writing a research paper right now, but for the life of me I cannot figure out where to start. I'm researching three influential people in the field of gifted education and writing a paper discussing how they have impacted the field.

I selected Renzulli, VanTassell-Baska, and Rimm. Renzulli because everything I read has his name cited somewhere - it seems like he is the foundation for everybody's thoughts whether they like him or hate him. It hardly seems like I can consider myself educated in G/T without being familiar with him to some degree. VanTassell-Baska I originally looked at because my professor recommended her. But having done some preliminary research, she has done some amazing work with curriculum development. Which is one of the directions I want to move towards. I am finding her work very interesting. I was not going to write about Rimm. I wanted to write about Carol Ann Tomlinson instead. But everything I was reading, including my textbook, was either written by or cited Rimm. And she focuses on one of my passion areas: underachievement. Which is how I am finally bringing my thoughts back to what I began with: overachieving slackers.

I find that I cannot skim when I am actually interested in the material. So, I have read now several studies, entire chapters, and even a book just to try to get my head around these three people. And what do I have to show for it? A well-polished essay ready to email to my professor? Not even close. I don't even have a page of notes on each person. What I have to show for it is a mental list of students who are underachievers and fomenting thoughts about how to use the material I have just read to help them suddenly become achievers. My brain is churning about ways to help these students set reasonable goals, show them that effort = achievement, etc.

And the funniest part of this is that I am modeling everything I am trying to get these kids to overcome: overachieving slackerhood. I am so caught up in trying to be a good student, a good teacher, a good parent - in trying to reach each of these students individually, etc. that my paper is due in three days and I have not even begun it yet.

Overachieving slackers are us.

teaching is hard to put on paper

I heard a very beautiful thought yesterday, that I will struggle to put down here.

We were in a curriculum mapping meeting kvetching about how difficult it is to put "gifted" onto paper. By that we meant all the little things we do every day to teach our students, but that don't make it into the very linear, uncompromising map. *bleah* In the end, if you read a map, it often looks very flat and lifeless, there is very little there to show all the myriad things we do to bring class to life.

Our facilitator told us that it isn't just gifted that is hard to put on paper, it is teaching. Teaching, she said, is an art. Our classes are our paintings. The map is perhaps the easel and the paint itself, but the students and the classes are the paintings. There is no way to translate that artwork into words. There is no way another person can walk into our classroom and recreate that same artwork. They can pick up the canvas and the paint and make their own artwork, but it will never be the same as what we create.

So here's to creating beautiful artwork, and to finding a way to put all the paint, canvases and easels in an organized place for the next artist to find :)

individualized classes

I have another quote from Losing Our Minds. p. 272 "Sometimes teachers offer bright children the opportunity to come up with their own projects, but students shouldn't be expected to develop their own curriculum, particularly before middle or high school ages. Instead, the teacher might ask these childen what they are reading, watching, or doing in their spare time and then use that information to tap into what might constitute an appropriate project."

I thought this quote was great for a couple of reasons. First, it strikes as completely absurd to expect so much maturity from students to not only do their own work but also to create it. I have trouble believing that any teacher finds that an acceptable practice. Second, this just ties right back into TPRS and the personalization. It's a matter of course in a TPRS classroom that the teacher asks students what they have been doing and develops those activities into the primary lesson.

And another quote with the same basic thoughts:

p. 272 "Students like these [highly gifted] are rarely motivated to do something simply because someone else told them they should. Why should they want to do their best on every assignment or project that comes along? In addition, being a mainstreamed student in a regular classroom can squelch these children's motivation to learn. A long day of school, even when non-challenging, can still exhaust one's energy. Materials and topics that are motivating should be provided during -- not after -- the school day in order to be effective."

In fact, why would any student not want this? I don't think this is relegated just to the needs of gifted students, but in fact to all students.

You're so smart

In Losing Our Minds, there was a quote I found fascinating on p. 273. "Some children think that others admire or respect them for how quickly and well they can do their work. If there is a chance that it will be too hard, they can become paralyzed with fear that they will lose the acceptance and admiration of others, and they don't dare risk it. These children need to be eased into a steadily more challenging and interesting learning environment."

I've read this before, that students who are often told how smart they are will deliberately choose not to be challenged because they interpret smart to mean they know all the answers, and they don't want to lose the compliments.

I know that I try to praise not just the right answers, but also the attempts. I also try to lower the affective filter as much as possible in my class. It isn't so much about knowing the right answers as having some fun and if learning occurs so much the better. (Learning always occurs when students are having fun in a foreign language.... so I am betting on the house.)

contradicting traditional thinking about gifted students

In Losing Our Minds, the author presented several ideas which have always been foreign to me. I'd like to put them out here right now to kind of mull them over.

She suggested that highly gifted students (level 3 and above) can in fact not only easily grade skip, but can quickly fill in any information gaps on their own as soon as they discover the need.

Now, we have done a bit not only of grade skipping, but also of level skipping, especially in math at my school. And we have discovered at the end that students often have holes the size of semi-trucks in their knowledge. I am wondering if the author's premise is incorrect, if our application of the premise was incorrect, if the students we advanced were not at a high enough level to advance so quickly, or if the way we presented the material in some way negated the students' ability to see the gaps at all.

She also stipulated that having students demonstrate mastery of current knowledge is counter-productive, because truly gifted and bored students will not be able to show the knowledge on a traditional test. But, I am thinking, the premise here is faulty. It isn't that we should not ask for a demonstration of knowledge, but that we have to find a way to let the gifted students show they understand the material. I will not argue at all that when the material is perceived to be too easy, gifted students often shut down or even when they try they do not see the mistakes they are making. I see this in my own son. He can accurately tell me which number is bigger or smaller at least with numbers through 39 (I haven't tried any further), but he will sometimes get the order of numbers wrong when he is counting. Since I know he grasps the concepts of the numbers, at least at a basic level, I wonder where the counting errors come in. Does he get bored or lose concentration? Whatever the reason for it, the fact remains that his comprehension of numbers is larger than he accurately demonstrates on a simple "test"

The last point I want to address in this post is the idea that highly gifted students can complete the elementary curriculum in 2 - 3 years as opposed to the traditional 5 -6. There are a lot of issues involved with younger students in upper grade levels. Not the least of which being what they may be exposed to, or what older students are unable to express in their presence. My school attempts to get around this by compacting the curriculum, and by adding depth to the information provided. But again, that hits the average student at my school. What happens to those students who are so profoundly gifted that they are above the curve in my school too? I still see them shutting down and tuning out. It galls me that 12 year-olds have shut down so completely to the idea of school. How do we get them back???

let's hear it for meaningless work!

Here's a quote from Losing Our Minds, p. 272: "Teachers commonly complain that gifted students only show effort for what interests them, as though this is a terrible thing. However, when you stop to think about it, most of us exhibit little enthusiasm for repetitive or meaningless work. [...] Teachers will have better success if they discuss the overall goals of the assignment with the children and let them make choices for how they will meet those goals, as well as how they will demonstrate that those goals have been met."

Once again, I am amazed at how well what I have been reading lately about gifted education theory meshes with my views on language acquisition and with what I know of TPRS. Of course students don't want to pay attention to boring, repetitive, meaningless work. Only those high-achievers, internally motivated and authority pleasing students would put up with that. And yet, as teachers, we are constantly surprised by students' lack of work. I especially like the part that points out that as adults we don't relish boring work either. The difference is that as adults we are given the choice to be selective, while our students are not.

Reading

I am currently reading a book entitled Losing Our Minds: Gifted Children Left Behind by Deborah L. Ruf. It is a truly fascinating book that is talking about some of the more typical characteristics and needs of children with different levels of giftedness. The author has divided these students into five levels of giftedness. Level one begins in roughly the 95 - 98th percentile with IQs from approximately 120 - 135. Level four and five are in the 99% percentile and are the true prodigies of our world. I'm reading this as my bedtime reading, so I'm taking my time processing all the information in it. I'm amazed at some of the differences exhibited by children at different levels of giftedness. As a GT teacher, I see it all the time, but I am realizing a little bit more about my own children and my students. Now I just have to figure out how to apply it so that I can better honor and reach those students who are so bright that my classes simply do not have enough meat to engage.

I am left with three main thoughts.

First, how do I adapt what I am learning to my classroom so that I can best reach ALL my students?

Second, I feel bad for all the students who have walked through my class and learned almost nothing because I just didn't know how to reach them (and probably because by the time they reached me in the 7th grade, they'd already given up on school.)

Third, If I'm going to keep up with all this reading and research, shouldn't I be getting a grade, a degree and a salary for it?

I'm light-hearted about it, but I'm seriously wishing I had the time and money to devote to that pursuit right now. But then where would I focus my energy? Second language acquisition? Pedagogy? Gifted? An amalgam of the three? I put in a phone call to a local university today that will let me design my own grad program... wish I may, wish I might...

And with this train of thought is the part of my own personality that is often mistaken by others - that is my passion. When I get truly interested in a topic, like I have this year with TPRS and the GT research, others often think I am upset or overbearing because it becomes a central focus of my life. I light-up, even at conferences, it's like I can suddenly see so far. I got like that at the CCFLT conference this spring. I was talking to these people whose books I have read, and I got so excited, I'm sure I sounded like a freak LOL

Oh well, we'll see where this goes. It's not like I have anything else on my plate these days (husband in a grad program, two toddlers, possibly moving, etc.)

leveled classes

I am toying with the idea of levelling my classes next year - not by how many years a student has been in my class, not by how much Spanish they have learned, and not even by their learning style. I am thinking of offering two specialized classes, one for fast-processors and one for slow-processors. The other students can fill out either class and then make up the rest of the three classes I have.

I'm thinking that this might allow me to differentiate just a little bit more for those students that need it the most. Some of my students process information so quickly that they really only need one or two repetitions to really grasp a concept. Other students on the other hand, need that twentieth repetition before it even sounds familiar. It is very frustrating for both groups to be in a class with the other. The fast processors are bored by the twentieth repetition (actually well before that) while those slower processors end up feeling stupid and out of touch when the class moves on before they get something. Those students who are not at either extreme can handle going a little quicker, but they also won't be hurt by slowing down and hearing the grammar in new contexts either.

The problem is, I have until tomorrow to make up my mind as that is when we are making our schedules for next year. I think it's a go, if it doesn't mess with the other teachers in the jr. high too much. With only 125 students, any rearranging of students is felt by everybody. We do it all the time for math, and oh it can be painful while geometry is being taught, because the rest of us have really large classes of students who are not the most motivated or fastest processing... :)

I wonder how often students have been divided in this way? And by fast processing I don't mean high achieving A students. In fact, many of the fastest processing kids are very low scoring kids because they are often so bored with school and all the drudgery. Likewise I don't mean the "stupid" kids by slow processing. One of the students I am considering for that group has a 160 IQ. I am hoping that this sort of grouping will allow the students to be themselves a little more, and allow me to honor them a little more.

Gifted

I grew up going through all the TAG classes (Talented and Gifted), and I didn't think much about it. Now I teach at a school for Gifted and Talented students. I still never really put much thought into it until this year. It has never struck me as anything that special or different, maybe because it has always been a part of who I am. In school my thoughts about being gifted mostly revolved around how different I seemed to be from my peers. (I was the geek who only had friends when science labs were due.)

Now I have a toddler who blows my socks off. He comes up with the most amazing things I have ever heard. For instance, he called a two-litre bottle of soda a "soda can't" Why? Because it was not a "soda can." He uses the word entity in sentences. He pretends to be a pigmy marmoset. He dictates amazing, elaborate stories to me. And I worry. What will school do to him?

Here I am, a teacher, and I worry about the future for my 3 year old. Because already he is bored with pre-school and won't answer questions he thinks are stupid or boring. Or he answers them incorrectly.

I don't want him to shut down in school. I don't want school to kill this sense of wonder he has about life, or the creativity he has with words and learning.

All of that is to lead into WHY I have recently been reading so much more about gifted education and right-brained students. Even in a population that is entirely gifted, we still have a bell curve. Some of my students have IQs near 150, and they don't learn the same as the students whos IQs are closer to 125. (I hate IQ tests, btw, but that's another rant.) And I realized, thinking about my own son getting left behind and shutting down, that I have students who are exactly the same. Even though they go to a school for the gifted and talented, their needs are still not being met.

I firmly believe that TPR and TPRS are the BEST ways to teach a foreign language to right-brained, gifted students. There is NO comparison. But, I'm trying to figure out how to reach all of my students, so none of them leave my classroom thinking that foreign language and even school are not for them.

I wonder how many people realize that the higher a person's IQ, the more likely they are to drop out of school? I run into this attitude sometimes that it's great that a person is smart, but they don't need any special options, classes, etc. As if being smart were all there is to getting by in the world, and once you reach a certain IQ then everybody else is equal. As if smart people aren't at risk.

Visual Learners

I teach a lot of right-brained visual thinkers. One of the things that was most attractive about TPR and TPRS to me initially was how right-brained friendly they are.

Currently I am reading Right-brained Children in a Left-brained World by Jeffrey Freed. I 've had a lot of thoughts about how his ideas mesh with TPRS, but haven't spent much time considering it in detail, mostly because I am reading the book in bed as I fall asleep. (I'm alternating that with El Hobbit - there's nothing quite like right-brained, Spanish speaking trolls running through your dreams, let me tell you!)

Anyway, Jeffrey Freed has a lot of tips on how to teach things that tend to be difficult to these students, like math facts or accurate spelling. One particular strategy jumped out at me as being very foreign language classroom friendly. The teacher and the student both have the same two words. They are competing to write the shortest sentence with those two words in it, and they must write their sentence correctly. I was thinking we could adapt that to having two teams in the class and relay race style have them come to the board, get their slips of paper with their two words, and write them on the board. A similar strategy I just ran across was a verb ladder game - there are two "ladders" drawn on the board and teams have to compete to fill in the conjugations of the verb until they have climbed the ladder.

Circling

Circling is a technique where the teacher asks a series of questions about the same structure. For instance if the sentence we are looking at is Sally danced in the park, circling questions could be focusing on danced. I could ask, Who danced? Where did Sally dance? What did Sally do? Did Sally or Martha dance? etc. It's great. It gets lots of comprehensible input in, but it is really boring. My students, abhor anything that resembles boring, so although I keep trying to circle, and I think I understand the concept, it flops each and every time.