5.3.2 Teaching Their Bodies, Not Their Brains: Instructing Physical Education Differently to Gifted Children

Oddly, though there has been substantial research into both intellectual and physical talent, there has been little to no work done on the best ways to teach gifted children to use their bodies rather than their brains.

After all, gym class is gym class wherever you go, right?

This, it turns out, is markedly untrue.

Our students bring all of themselves into the gym and onto the field. Their intensity, that competitive streak, and drive to learn and master new things are there — but so is intellectual rigidity and impatience with gradual growth. The children who require a very different kind of English or math teacher and curriculum also need a very different kind of Physical Education program and teachers. Our all-gifted school differentiates instruction in all our classes, but Physical Education has slightly different “flavor” which takes into account the effects that their intensity and sense of fairness as well as their risk-averseness and fear of failure.

With this realization, our Physical Education instructors started from scratch, reconceptualizing gym and changing what we expect for (and from) our students. Many of the pedagogical approaches that come from research-based best practices in gifted education also apply here: preassessment, awareness of their asynchronous social-emotional development, and attention to differentiation and identification of student’s zones of proximal development all have their place in gym. However, other practices are very different: our instructors spend twice as much time talking, which means less time for playing but more engagement when they do play. The teachers also spend a great deal of time managing intense social-emotional responses to things gifted children are not comfortable with, such as not having one right answer about who to pass the ball to, or with the idea that you can do your best and the team may still lose. In some ways, their curriculum development and lesson plans even borrow a sprinkling of wisdom and knowledge from special education: they break down new material differently and allow more time for students to master skills before organizing a game in a new sport, for example.

We want to share with administrators and teachers of the gifted the field-tested insights and strategies that have made a huge difference in student performance and engagement (and teacher satisfaction!) in our Physical Education classes, in hopes that real-world examples and concrete recommendations will allow others to benefit from our experiences.

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