Individual cognitive growth

One misconception about gifted students is that they will excel no matter what, so it's better to focus our attention on the students who are hampered from completing their tasks effectively. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Gifted students drop out at similar rates as non-gifted students, often perform similarly grade-wise (although this is oft-debated) and develop in the same fits and starts as any adolescent. Neglect of a gifted student will lead to similar results as neglect of a non-gifted student.

In order to address this, I felt it important to look at the cognitive needs of gifted students and test them accordingly in my classroom, while continuing to teach every student. Information processing is different for different students, but I found that a number of gifted students overestimate how much information processing ability they have. When a concept or skill does not come easily, frustration can quickly set in. Particularly when you're used to breezing through your far-below-grade-level reading material, the prospect of a challenge can be nerve-wracking.

I began to realize that I could not simply plop down more work in front of a student and expect him or her to complete it simply because he or she had the ability to do so. I decided that scaffolding the material would help gifted students understand just as it did for non-gifted students. Those hypothetical units of attention are not vastly different in function than the same hypothetical units on other students; thus, the teaching methodology for gifted students would not necessarily have to differ. Recall that this was the main difficulty I had to approach in the original dilemma -- how do you teach gifted students without going insane creating more work? Teaching the same way with advanced material certainly seemed like a prospect that would fit.

Also of note, however, is that some gifted students are extremely advanced in one area and not in another. Asynchronous development is one of the hallmarks of gifted students (Coleman, 2005). As a result, gifted educators recommend a variety of more open-ended assignments that can help gifted students learn on their own. Unfortunately, the frustration the students felt as they reached basic cognitive barriers was often enough to discourage them. This led me to reconsider my approach, and consider whether such extension was too taxing on them. Even open-ended projects needed structure to ensure that a student did not overload on material or skills. Most gifted students did not suffer from a data-based deficiency, but when they did, it was necessary to lay basic groundwork first.