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OK, your child is at PSA and the school is open—now what? What does my child have in store and what should I look for from her school experiences?

I have answers to these questions but I have to couch my answer in the reality that schools are living, breathing organizations. Educational programs do not spring into place fully grown; rather, they are the result of proper care, nurturing and support. Right now PSA is in its infancy ready to begin taking its first steps on the journey to maturity.

So you probably won’t see everything listed below in your child’s classes tomorrow, but they do guide decisions regarding curriculum and instruction at PSA. The categories come from the chapter Designed to Fit: Educational Implications of Gifted Adolescents’ Cognitive Development in Programs and Services for Gifted Secondary Students: A Guide to Recommended Practices.

Copious High Quality Content. Gifted adolescents need exposure to a larger quantity of content that they find challenging. The importance of developing a plentiful, high-quality well of information is essential as it is a precursor to using higher order thinking, metacognitive thinking, and abstract thinking. Gifted students will not adequately develop their thinking skills without this knowledge base.

Example: Using Michael Thompson’s Word within a Word series, students internalize a compendium of Latin roots and stems. This knowledge opens the door to eloquence in written and spoken word.

Conceptual Understanding. Beginning at least in middle school, gifted students should be exposed to abstract content that focuses on the ‘big ideas’ that link different fields of endeavor. Discussions about, for example, the nature of change, different forms of systems, support provided by structures, varying forms of justice, should become standard.

Example: Students carry the conceptual framework of history as the interactions between individuals, groups and institutions throughout their study of history. In the study of Progressive Era students consider the relationship between individuals, like Jane Addams, on groups, such as immigrants or wealthy Chicagoans. They also look at the impact an individual like Addams had on institutions like the juvenile justice system.

Developing critical thinking, creativity, metacognition, self-direction. Gifted students must be presented with learning experiences that require them to engage critical thinking, creativity and metacognitive skills. If they do not find their assignments challenging, their brains simply do not use their higher order functions. Together, content and strategy used along with metacognition predict academic performance, making the simultaneous development of these three paramount. Gifted students should spend more time constructing their own understanding using inquiry based methods.

Example: Using Connected Math students are required to actually understand mathematics rather than just answer endless pages of problems. As they construct the laws governing the formulas they use, they gain a deep understanding of how mathematics works. As they work they learn to question how math works and they test variations on mathematical ideas. Their frustration over mistakes can turn into an avenue for deeper understanding of mathematics and of themselves.

Preparing for Expertise. Capitalizing on gifted students’ early promise for expertise requires instruction where students can experience what experts do, what they think, and what they believe. Curriculum and instruction using open-ended instruction, inquiry-based curriculum, field experiences, and mentorships, all centered on high-quality disciplinary or interdisciplinary content, support this development. If we aspire for gifted students—or for any student—to become creative, productive leaders in their chosen field, curriculum and instruction should be selected to expose students to the core the philosophies and values of different disciplines.

Example: Students are introduced to the wonderful web site created by Jane Goodall: Lessons for Hope (http://www.lessonsforhope.org/). On that site students are provided the tools to act and think like anthropologists and learn that being a scientist is not just about the stages of experimentation but also that qualities like patience resilience and persistence are essential to science—making self-knowledge essential as well.