NAGC 2022
Look Out! Spotting High Potential Through Inquiry-Based Experiences
Inquiry-focused lessons provide opportunities for all children to demonstrate high-potential behaviors in response to open-ended or slightly ambiguous tasks with various entry points or multiple reasonable answers. Session participants practice an approach to designing inquiry lessons for primary classrooms, focusing on inviting engagement and exploration, encouraging high-potential behaviors, and challenging children to apply thinking skills in core content areas.
Sample lessons:
ELA: What Happened in this Hole?
Math: Counting Cupcakes
Unpacking Productive Struggle: Supporting Teachers in Conceptualizing Challenge
NAGC 2021
Enhancing Teachers’ Understanding and Practice Related to High Potential of Diverse Learners – Pam Peters, Shana Lusk, Rachael Cody, and Rebecca O’Brien
We explored teachers’ perceptions of academic potential and how they respond to advanced students before and after attending rigorous professional learning workshops focused on high-potential behaviors in the general education classroom, looking at differences in the way they described traditionally underrepresented students and their majority peers. We discuss themes that emerged and offer suggestions for implementing meaningful professional learning.
Identifying the Trail Markers to Curriculum Fidelity – Catherine Little, Sarah Charbonneau, and Alexandra Cascio
Fidelity is a critical consideration in implementing high-quality curriculum, informing decisions about differentiation, and supporting classroom-based research. Administrators can use fidelity tools to understand teachers’ needs and frame discussions around effective practice. We share sample fidelity instruments from a current research study, explain how to develop similar tools, and discuss how these tools may inform ongoing professional learning.
Inviting Engagement and Exploration: Supporting Inquiry in ELA and Math – Elizabeth Fogarty, Janine Firmender, and Catherine Little
How can teachers invite students into exploring new learning? How can exploratory activities give students space to show academic potential and creativity, while helping teachers assess readiness for content learning? We share approaches drawn from the 5e inquiry model to promote access, engagement, and exploration across content areas, with guidelines and practice for enabling teachers to employ these approaches effectively.
Sample lessons:
ELA: Why Can’t Calvin Fly? The Most Magnificent Thing
Math: 3-Digit Place Value Arrays Around Us
Savoring Struggle: Giving Students (and Teachers!) Tools for Meeting Challenges – Catherine Little and Clarisa Rodrigues
Productive struggle involves wrestling with ideas, thinking deeply about problems, and taking steps forward with no clear path to answers. It requires uncovering the source of frustration in a task, but gifted students unused to much challenge may not have practiced effective strategies. We share tools for supporting productive struggle, including cautions around “helpful” teacher actions that reduce cognitive demand.
Sample lesson referenced in presentation:
NAGC 2020
Learning Experiences for “Incredible” Kids: Lessons that Invite Gifted Behaviors – Elizabeth Fogarty, Catherine Little, and Janine Firmender
When lessons are deliberately designed to elicit gifted behaviors, teachers have more opportunity to observe talent potential and to respond to advanced learner needs. We share an inquiry-focused framework and differentiation approaches used in sample reading and math lessons (grades 1-3) that invite students to demonstrate high-potential behaviors such as perceptiveness, strategic thinking, and creativity.
A Whole New World with Professional Learning – Kelly Kearney, Pam Peters, & Rebecca O’Brien
Professional learning experiences can positively influence educational practice of teachers unfamiliar with behaviors of high-potential learners from diverse populations. We explored teachers’ perceptions of academic potential before and after attending rigorous professional learning workshops focused on recognizing and responding to high-potential behaviors in the general education classroom. We discuss themes that emerged and offer suggestions for implementing meaningful professional learning.
NAGC 2019
Planning with Rosie, Ada, and Iggy in Mind – Janine Firmender, Elizabeth Fogarty, Catherine Little, Kelly Kearney, and Pam Peters
How can teachers plan lessons that encourage students to demonstrate high-potential behaviors? Planning lessons based on inquiry invites students to demonstrate gifted behaviors, which then allows ongoing integration of differentiation to respond directly to individual student needs. In this session, we share a structure for planning inquiry-based lessons across content areas in the early grades, with focus on encouraging high-potential behaviors.
Sample Lessons: Math English Language Arts