Gifted Children

One of the most challenging types of student is the gifted or talented child. The gifted child is extremely bright; quickly grasping ideas and concepts you are teaching and making interpretations or extrapolations that you may not even have considered. Gifted children may also have a creativity that shows itself in original thinking or artistic creations. Students who are gifted or talented are sometimes overlooked when educators talk about students with special needs.

The empirical article I found entitled "Why gifted kids often fall by the wayside" by Jenny Tabakoff was posted on June 14, 2002. The main idea in this article is that when gifted children are put into classes for gifted children, they often "turn out to be the stars of the school". The published article I found entitled "Putting the Well-Being of All Students (Including Gifted Students) First" by Tracy L. Cross, Ph. D. has a similar theme.

St. Afra is one a few specialist schools that serv...

State School for Gifted Children with Competence C...

The University School for Gifted and Talented Chil...

The approach this article takes says we should challenge students in highly systematic and informed ways, wherein learning takes place just within the intellectual reach of the child. Both of these articles have very similar interests in that both are looking to better the education of the gifted and talented children. Both feel that schools should be encouraged to identify the needs of the students as individuals.

Sometimes having a gifted student in a normal classroom can be dangerous for the well-being of that student and possibly the students around him. In the first article by Jenny Tabakoff, she states that "Having an exceptionally bright child is a mixed blessing, particularly if the school is unable to provide enough intellectual stimulation. A bright, but bored child is at risk of developing emotional or behavioral problems". In the second article Dr. Cross feels that "in schools that do...