Parallel Session Proceedings »
5.2.6 Balancing Content Standards with the Hallmarks of GT Pedagogy
Adhering to standards-based curriculum and teaching for transfer are foundational imperatives for most teachers, including those who work with gifted and talented students. Their reality is that students must be prepared to succeed on state-level testing.
If a district's budget can fund a teacher of gifted and talented education at each school, then instruction must be aligned to the tested curriculum standards, particularly when students are pulled out of the general education setting a few times a week. An authentic GT program is inclusive of the diverse students that comprise a school: cognitively asynchronous students, twice/multi-exceptional learners, students living in poverty, English learners, etc. Therefore, gifted curricula in these programs must be robust, engaging, and developmentally appropriate.
This session will unpack the curriculum planning processes and "interactive" template used by the elementary gifted and talented education program in WCPS. The Understanding by Design (Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe) planning model centers on the concept (Hilda Taba, Lynne Erickson) addressed at each grade level in the elementary GATE program. Stages 2 and 3 of the template are inclusive of the various components/"layers" described by Sandra N. Kaplan. Additionally, Stage 3 learning experiences address the concept and its connected curriculum standards, while explicitly teaching thinking skills--as described by Deborah E. Burns and Jann H. Leppien--by using protocols to have students strategically engage with the content.
Participants will explore unit examples, noting the key elements that fuse the best practices of content planning with hallmarks from the field of GT education.