Ways to find gifted students
Often when people think of gifted students, they think of the straight- A student, the one with the first hand up. But a gifted child also might be the student with artistic ability, good social skills, a strong sense of humor or a unique interest such as germs or insects. A gifted child may even be a difficult child.
A gifted student who speaks limited English or who recently immigrated to the United States may be quiet, shy and uncomfortable questioning adults. Yet her teacher may have been taught that gifted children ask questions and express enthusiasm.
This school year, Lanie Mitchell, a teacher of gifted students, visited kindergarten classrooms at Parkway's Shenandoah Valley Elementary School in Chesterfield.
Mitchell asked the children in one class to arrange pictures on their desks and tell her a story using the pictures. She looked for complex ideas and thinking, correct order, humor, sensitivity and advanced language skills. The activity was one of a handful Mitchell would use to help decide whether a child was a candidate for a gifted program.
The last step is the IQ test. Children in gifted programs usually score in at least the 95th percentile on an intelligence test. Generally that works out to be at least a 125 IQ.
One girl stood out because she told a story about how birds fly south because it is too cold for them to stay in this area, that if they stayed they would die. One boy stood out because with no direction he made a light bulb filament and talked about how a light works.
Jack A. Naglieri, a professor at George Mason University in Virginia, said one reason black and Hispanic children are less often identified as gifted is because many intelligence tests require reading and knowledge tha t some disadvantaged children have not had enough opportunity to develop. Naglieri has shown that those children can shine when tested in nonverbal ways.
Mary Frasier, a professor at the University of Georgia, has developed a rating scale that some area teachers say is an unbiased way to help identify gifted children. She identifies traits associated with giftedness such as memory, motivation, interests, communication, creativity, humor, problem-solving, reasoning, inquiry and insight.
Rockwood teachers are among those who have looked to the work of Frasier and Naglieri in revising ways to identify gifted children. Rockwood began a program five years ago to reach culturally diverse, poor and handicapped children as well as children who speak English as a second language, said Chris Puttcamp, a teacher who started the program.
