cover article in Time magazine on gifted education

Ericka Kammerer wrote:
Banty wrote:

It all sounds so nice and good to teach some kids by whole word,
some by phonics, tailored oh-so beautifully to the individual kid.
But having gone through this with my son, I saw that he was confused
by the two approaches being applied to him. He's a concrete-minded
kid. They want him to just look at the word, peering at this part
and that in no particular order, then when, given no formula, he
gets too frustrated with that they teach some phonics, but then he's
to read with this other kid who hasn't a clue about sounds and
letters...

I think this usually works best when kids with similar
needs are grouped so that instruction can be tailored to them.

What the **** happened to jigsawing, group kids of different skill levels
together so that the stronger kids could model for and help the weaker ones?
That was all the rage until about 5 minutes ago. I wonder how long
diffentiated instruction will last.

When my kids were in first grade, I think there were something
like 7-8 different reading groups so that instruction could be
tailored to their needs more precisely. It seemed to work
quite well.

I remember that -- tracking! It's back. It was an evil term for years and
now it has returned. That is how I was taught in elementary school and it
worked well for me -- I was in the highest track, so of course it did. I
was already really good at reading. The question is, how well did it work
for the others? I have no idea.

(And kids who were way out of bounds could go
work in reading groups in another grade.)

Does anyone think that any of these methods turned bottom-track kids into
top-trackers? Really? Nothing, and I mean nothing, in this world will make
me a professional baseball player. I might be better than I am now, but I
will never be good. Why do we think that everyone can be a scholar, if we
just teach them in the right way? Not everyone is a scholar and many of
those who aren't still do quite well. I remember my bottom-tracked neighbor
never did well in school, but his boat maintenance business has made him
quite comfortable indeed. I am sure he makes a lot more than I do.

Best wishes,
Ericka

--
nimue

"Let your freak-flag fly, and if someone doesn't get you, move on."
Drew Barrymore

nimue wrote:
Anne Rogers wrote:
Yeah -- these are the kids who would have had reading problems
regardless of which approach was used -- and phonics still benefits
these kids more than whole language.
I think you're saying exactly what I intended to say, it really does
seem to give the best overall results for group teaching at
kindergarten age. I think a lot of children without even being taught
it are going to learn a proportion of their vocabulary by word
recognition - after
all, a good number of children can recognise their own names before
learning any phonics. My son kind of does half and half, he knows the
majority of the sounds, but a lot of the stuff he attempts to read is
single words, with some kind of context and he'll sound out the first
syllable then guess at the word from the context.

Ouch -- that's not good. I see kids in high school doing that and it really
messes with their reading comp.

But why would one assume that just because a preschooler
does this that it will be characteristic of their reading once
they're high schoolers? People do different things at different
stages.

Guessing a word is very different from
knowing a word. Guessing is NOT recognizing -- it's guessing. Granted,
these are kids with reading problems anyway,

Exactly. It's not surprising that they have adapted
long term maladaptive strategies as a result of their problems,
not necessarily because initial pre-reading experiences *caused*
their problems.

so perhaps someone like your
son, who doesn't have reading problems, might be able to use that method. I
guess reading may evolve into that -- after all, none of us is sounding out
the words we are reading anymore -- we just recognize them. You can't get
to whole language without phonics, however, so it's pointless to teach
something (whole language) that just evolves out of something else (phonics)
naturally.

But the point is that it *doesn't* evolve that way for all kids.
Some kids, probably those who are more visual and have excellent
memories, learn the other way around. Phonics can actually confuse
them because they're already quite proficient at reading and there
are so many exceptions to the phonics rules. At some point, they'll
either make some generalizations themselves or learn some phonics
rules as a way of dealing with novel words, but will still basically
learn to read via whole word. And frankly, there's not much you
can do to stop these kids short of refusing to read to them so that
they can't make the connections between the spoken and printed words.

I guess it's kind of like driving to a friends new home. The
first time you will need directions, need to have the way broken down and
made clear. Later, you can just drive there -- but you needed those
directions first.

But it just doesn't work that way for everyone in
reading.

Best wishes,
Ericka

"nimue" wrote in message
...
Stephanie wrote:
"nimue" wrote in message
...
toto wrote:
On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 21:05:11 -0400, "nimue"
wrote:

One weakness in the system that comes to my mind is the ...
preference of the teacher! I wish all learning could be aimed at
the needs of the children.

How do you propose to do that in a class of 30 students?

It's called differentiating learning

It's called differentiated instruction and the NYC school system is
hot for
it right now -- that and using data to help differentiate
instruction.

and it is done all the time in
elementary school classrooms. It's not always easy, but it is being
done.

http://members.shaw.ca/priscillather...entiating.html

1. Differentiating the Content/Topic

Content can be described as the knowledge, skills and attitudes we
want children to learn. Differentiating content requires that
students are pre-tested so the teacher can identify the students
who do not require direct instruction. Students demonstrating
understanding of the concept can skip the instruction step and
proceed to apply the concepts to the task of solving a problem.
This strategy is often referred to as compacting the curriculum.
Another way to differentiate content is simply to permit the apt
student to accelerate their rate of progress. They can work ahead
independently on some projects, i.e. they cover the content faster
than their peers.

2. Differentiating the Process/Activities

Differentiating the processes means varying learning activities or
strategies to provide appropriate methods for students to explore
the concepts. It is important to give students alternative paths to
manipulate the ideas embedded within the concept. For example
students may use graphic organizers, maps, diagrams or charts to
display their comprehension of concepts covered. Varying the
complexity of the graphic organizer can very effectively facilitate
differing levels of cognitive processing for students of differing
ability.

3. Differentiating the Product

Differentiating the product means varying the complexity of the
product (http://www.rogertaylor.com/reference/Product-Grid.pdf)
that students create to demonstrate mastery of the concepts.
Students working below grade level may have reduced performance
expectations, while students above grade level may be asked to
produce work that requires more complex or more advanced thinking.
There are many sources of alternative product ideas available to
teachers. However sometimes it is motivating for students to be
offered choice of product.

4. Diffferentiating By Manipulating The Environment or Through
Accommodating Individual Learning Styles

There has been a great deal of work on learning styles over the
last 2 decades. Dunn and Dunn (http://www.learningstyles.net/)
focused on manipulating the school environment at about the same
time as Joseph Renzulli recommended varying teaching strategies.
Howard Gardner identified individual talents or aptitudes in his
Multiple Intelligences theories. Based on the works of Jung, the
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
(http://partners.mce.be/wbt/mbti/personal.htm) and Kersley's
Temperament Sorter focused on understanding how people's
personality affects the way they interact personally, and how this
affects the way individuals respond to each other within the
learning environment. The work of David Kolb and Anthony Gregorc's
Type Delineator follows a similar but more simplified approach.

--
nimue

"Let your freak-flag fly, and if someone doesn't get you, move on."
Drew Barrymore



It sure as heck is not being done in Fairfax VT. At least not
effectively.

Differentiated instruction takes nearly everything we learned about
cooperative learning and tosses it. No more jigsawing! Nope, we are
grouping by ability now and giving different assignments to different
groups
in the same classroom.




I don't know what cooperative learning or jigsawing are. I am not a
classroom educator.

I have to wonder that if they were working they would not be being
abandoned. Maybe that is simplistic. Sometimes things fail to work because
the principles were not properly applied.

I have always wondered about our grouping by age anyway. Why would you not
be working with people who are working on the same level as you are? Why do
you have to be with the same people in reading as your are in math or free
play?



--
nimue

"Let your freak-flag fly, and if someone doesn't get you, move on."
Drew Barrymore

nimue wrote:
Ericka Kammerer wrote:
Banty wrote:

It all sounds so nice and good to teach some kids by whole word,
some by phonics, tailored oh-so beautifully to the individual kid.
But having gone through this with my son, I saw that he was confused
by the two approaches being applied to him. He's a concrete-minded
kid. They want him to just look at the word, peering at this part
and that in no particular order, then when, given no formula, he
gets too frustrated with that they teach some phonics, but then he's
to read with this other kid who hasn't a clue about sounds and
letters...
I think this usually works best when kids with similar
needs are grouped so that instruction can be tailored to them.

What the **** happened to jigsawing, group kids of different skill levels
together so that the stronger kids could model for and help the weaker ones?
That was all the rage until about 5 minutes ago. I wonder how long
diffentiated instruction will last.

I think much of this stuff is regional. "Jigsawing"
was never popular here (thank goodness, as it's usually
poorly implemented and a miserable failure).

When my kids were in first grade, I think there were something
like 7-8 different reading groups so that instruction could be
tailored to their needs more precisely. It seemed to work
quite well.

I remember that -- tracking! It's back. It was an evil term for years and
now it has returned. That is how I was taught in elementary school and it
worked well for me -- I was in the highest track, so of course it did. I
was already really good at reading. The question is, how well did it work
for the others? I have no idea.

There are significant differences in tracking. The main
problem with earlier versions was that as implemented, kids got
tracked into rigid across-the-board tracks (that often institutionalized
racial or socio-economic differences) with little movement among
tracks and reduced opportunities for kids on lower tracks. People
rightly perceived that this wasn't particularly fair or appropriate.
Better tracking systems are more fluid, are not across
the board in all subjects, and don't inherently limit kids'
opportunities as much. In other words, you don't get tracked
into the "vocational ed." track at 3rd grade such that you're
pretty much guaranteed never to get the education that would
allow you to be successful in college.

(And kids who were way out of bounds could go
work in reading groups in another grade.)

Does anyone think that any of these methods turned bottom-track kids into
top-trackers? Really? Nothing, and I mean nothing, in this world will make
me a professional baseball player. I might be better than I am now, but I
will never be good. Why do we think that everyone can be a scholar, if we
just teach them in the right way?

Where did I suggest that? As far as I can tell, that's
not the goal of the groupings in our schools either. The goal is
to meet kids where they are and help them make the most progress
that they can. Obviously different kids have different potential.
The goal is simply to limit the negative effects of having to
teach groups of kids with varying abilities at the same level.
That said, there *is* movement among groups. Particularly
in early elementary, a lot of it is developmental. Those who
are "late bloomers" may start out in a lower group and all of
a sudden develop the skills to move to a different one. Kids
who start out in a lower level because they are not native
English speakers or because they've recently transferred from
a school where the curriculum runs differently may catch up
and move to higher levels as well. And that's as it should
be, in my opinion.

Best wishes,
Ericka

Sue wrote:

that, but I am very suspicious of other people and their gifted children. I
don't have any good experiences with the Gifted class at our school, they
tell the kids that they are better than everyone else in the school. I find
that the particular gifted class in our school is made up of kids who their
parents pushed and pushed for them to get in this class, they are ususally
made up of unruly ADD/ADHD kids that cannot be in a regular class because of
the disruptions, then there are the truly gifted. I would truly say that
there are only a handful that really truly needs to be in a class like this.

If in fact this is a poor program, that doesn't say anything
about gifted kids in general. And to be honest, what I hear you
saying is often the sort of stuff that gets said about programs that
are just fine due to a whole lot of other motives that some people
have.

I am definitely around gifted people. My nephew is gifted and extremely
smart. He is 16 and going to college to be a brain surgeon. His mother
thinks that he could do something more than that, but who knows. My SIL
pushes and pushes her kids. And I have to be honest and say her kids are
freaks. On Christmas, the boy brings his calculus book and is doing math
problems when he should have been socializing and being with family. My
neice of the same family, who is 14, won't leave her mother's side because
she doesn't know how to socialize with other people. And that is not my only
experience. My husband's long time friend is extremely gifted and again, he
has social problems. So are these things accurate for all gifted people,
certainly not, but it is so prevalent that it is a problem and I think while
the parents are pushing academics, they should also be pushing social skills
and how to get along with others, and not make others feel that they are
less of a person because they are not as smart.

I wouldn't push your personal experiences too far. While
it's true that there are pushy parents (and school systems where
pushy parents can get their kids into "gifted" programs), I don't
think your characterizations are as common as you seem to think
they are. I spend a reasonable amount of time interacting with
the gifted classes here, and the overwhelming majority of kids
in there are just fine socially, if perhaps a bit out of sync
with their age peers, and have delightful parents who aren't
at all pushy. Yes, some have ADHD or other issues (we know that
those things happen in gifted populations, and perhaps they're
even a little more common), but it's not like the class is
impossible to deal with. The only real difference with these
kids is that they need support and resources to be able to
realize their academic potential (and avoid the significant
negative consequences of failing to meet their needs, like
under-performance, depression, dropping out of school, etc.).
Aside from that, they have lots of other interests and talents
and are generally delightful and interesting kids with
delightful and interesting families (with the occasional
exception, just as with any other group of folks). It certainly
isn't the case that most of these kids (or the school) believe
that they're better than others who aren't gifted. Sounds to
me as though there's blame to be laid at the feet of your
administrators as much as anyone (if this "holier than thou"
attitude is actually coming from the school/teachers/students
rather than from sour grapes in the rumor mill).

Best wishes,
Ericka

Stephanie wrote:
"nimue" wrote in message
...
Stephanie wrote:
"nimue" wrote in message
...
toto wrote:
On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 21:05:11 -0400, "nimue"
wrote:

One weakness in the system that comes to my mind is the ...
preference of the teacher! I wish all learning could be aimed at
the needs of the children.

How do you propose to do that in a class of 30 students?

It's called differentiating learning

It's called differentiated instruction and the NYC school system is
hot for
it right now -- that and using data to help differentiate
instruction.

and it is done all the time in
elementary school classrooms. It's not always easy, but it is
being done.

http://members.shaw.ca/priscillather...entiating.html

1. Differentiating the Content/Topic

Content can be described as the knowledge, skills and attitudes we
want children to learn. Differentiating content requires that
students are pre-tested so the teacher can identify the students
who do not require direct instruction. Students demonstrating
understanding of the concept can skip the instruction step and
proceed to apply the concepts to the task of solving a problem.
This strategy is often referred to as compacting the curriculum.
Another way to differentiate content is simply to permit the apt
student to accelerate their rate of progress. They can work ahead
independently on some projects, i.e. they cover the content faster
than their peers.

2. Differentiating the Process/Activities

Differentiating the processes means varying learning activities or
strategies to provide appropriate methods for students to explore
the concepts. It is important to give students alternative paths
to manipulate the ideas embedded within the concept. For example
students may use graphic organizers, maps, diagrams or charts to
display their comprehension of concepts covered. Varying the
complexity of the graphic organizer can very effectively
facilitate differing levels of cognitive processing for students
of differing ability.

3. Differentiating the Product

Differentiating the product means varying the complexity of the
product (http://www.rogertaylor.com/reference/Product-Grid.pdf)
that students create to demonstrate mastery of the concepts.
Students working below grade level may have reduced performance
expectations, while students above grade level may be asked to
produce work that requires more complex or more advanced thinking.
There are many sources of alternative product ideas available to
teachers. However sometimes it is motivating for students to be
offered choice of product.

4. Diffferentiating By Manipulating The Environment or Through
Accommodating Individual Learning Styles

There has been a great deal of work on learning styles over the
last 2 decades. Dunn and Dunn (http://www.learningstyles.net/)
focused on manipulating the school environment at about the same
time as Joseph Renzulli recommended varying teaching strategies.
Howard Gardner identified individual talents or aptitudes in his
Multiple Intelligences theories. Based on the works of Jung, the
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
(http://partners.mce.be/wbt/mbti/personal.htm) and Kersley's
Temperament Sorter focused on understanding how people's
personality affects the way they interact personally, and how this
affects the way individuals respond to each other within the
learning environment. The work of David Kolb and Anthony Gregorc's
Type Delineator follows a similar but more simplified approach.

--
nimue

"Let your freak-flag fly, and if someone doesn't get you, move on."
Drew Barrymore



It sure as heck is not being done in Fairfax VT. At least not
effectively.

Differentiated instruction takes nearly everything we learned about
cooperative learning and tosses it. No more jigsawing! Nope, we are
grouping by ability now and giving different assignments to different
groups
in the same classroom.




I don't know what cooperative learning or jigsawing are. I am not a
classroom educator.

I have to wonder that if they were working they would not be being
abandoned. Maybe that is simplistic.

It is. Every few years a new style of educating comes along that is
supposed to level the playing field and work for everyone. After a bit of
time, it is always abandoned and the new savior is adapted -- it's
ridiculous.

Sometimes things fail to work
because the principles were not properly applied.

Well, you've never taught, have you?

I have always wondered about our grouping by age anyway.

None of the strategies I mentioned (indeed, none I ever heard of) addresses
the appropriateness of grouping by age. It just isn't mentioned.

Why would
you not be working with people who are working on the same level as
you are?

You do -- as long as they are in your age group. Anyway, you do NOW and you
did years ago, but there has been a long time in between during which
"tracking" was thought to be a dirty, even racist word and concept.

Why do you have to be with the same people in reading as
your are in math or free play?

Huh?



--
nimue

"Let your freak-flag fly, and if someone doesn't get you, move on."
Drew Barrymore

--
nimue

"Let your freak-flag fly, and if someone doesn't get you, move on."
Drew Barrymore

In article , Ericka Kammerer
says...

Banty wrote:

It all sounds so nice and good to teach some kids by whole word, some by
phonics, tailored oh-so beautifully to the individual kid. But having gone
through this with my son, I saw that he was confused by the two approaches being
applied to him. He's a concrete-minded kid. They want him to just look at the
word, peering at this part and that in no particular order, then when, given no
formula, he gets too frustrated with that they teach some phonics, but then he's
to read with this other kid who hasn't a clue about sounds and letters...

I think this usually works best when kids with similar
needs are grouped so that instruction can be tailored to them.
When my kids were in first grade, I think there were something
like 7-8 different reading groups so that instruction could be
tailored to their needs more precisely. It seemed to work
quite well. (And kids who were way out of bounds could go
work in reading groups in another grade.)


Again, fine and good, except how to manage all that. My son's classes were
divided into three groups, and in first and second grade he was in the bottom
group getting pull-out help; after the second he was in the middle group. They
didn't divide it any more finely than that, and it was by overall ability, not
learning style.

And one thing I noted was that they seemed to go to whole word as the front up
approach, which makes absolutely no sense to me. How does a kid apply Toto's
list, for example, of looking at beginning letter, ending letter, seeing if a
known word is present within the new word, etc., if they've just started and
already expected to recognize words??

That kids know, for example, what their name looks like and recognize
"Coca-Cola", for instance, DOES NOT mean that therefore they're whole word
learners and are all set to learn a whole first grade vocabulary that way. It
only means a word has been in front of them a lot. We know roads have white
lines on either side, a yellow double in the middle. That does NOT mean highway
designers learn their engineering by being shown a progression of pictures - it
only means what's in front of people a lot is familiar. I see this brought up
time and time again - that kids come in recognizing certain words, as evidence
that they're "whole word learners". I just don't think it's true. Indeed, in
the course of learning by phonics, eventually common words become recognizable,
and the word looks familiar - but that does not mean that the best way to attack
an unfamiliar word is by trying to recognize it! If anything, phonics should be
the front up approach, with more emphasis on word-recognition as a strategy for
kids that are doing that more quickly.

I just don't have faith from what I've seen in the whole "whole word - phonics
combined" learning style philosophy that's taken hold. Not that it's applied
well in ordinary classrooms; not even that it's actually really well studied and
understood, frankly. Partly because of the somewhat circular rationale I hear
supporting whole word.

This is like how my faith in current educational teaching of math is broken,
since there's a philosophy that math learning is verbally based floating about.
It might even be another example of what's devised by an education profession
that has relatively few analytical people.

Banty

In article , nimue says...

Anne Rogers wrote:
Yeah -- these are the kids who would have had reading problems
regardless of which approach was used -- and phonics still benefits
these kids more than whole language.

I think you're saying exactly what I intended to say, it really does
seem to give the best overall results for group teaching at
kindergarten age. I think a lot of children without even being taught
it are going to learn a proportion of their vocabulary by word
recognition - after
all, a good number of children can recognise their own names before
learning any phonics. My son kind of does half and half, he knows the
majority of the sounds, but a lot of the stuff he attempts to read is
single words, with some kind of context and he'll sound out the first
syllable then guess at the word from the context.

Ouch -- that's not good. I see kids in high school doing that and it really
messes with their reading comp. Guessing a word is very different from
knowing a word. Guessing is NOT recognizing -- it's guessing. Granted,
these are kids with reading problems anyway, so perhaps someone like your
son, who doesn't have reading problems, might be able to use that method.

My son, who is actually pretty bright, *did* to exactly that a lot! Because,
confronted with a new word, and a whole word learning background, what else is
one supposed to do?? It's a reasonable way to interpret what the teacher is
telling him to do.

I
guess reading may evolve into that -- after all, none of us is sounding out
the words we are reading anymore -- we just recognize them. You can't get
to whole language without phonics, however, so it's pointless to teach
something (whole language) that just evolves out of something else (phonics)
naturally. I guess it's kind of like driving to a friends new home. The
first time you will need directions, need to have the way broken down and
made clear. Later, you can just drive there -- but you needed those
directions first.


'Xactly.

Banty

In article , Ericka Kammerer
says...

Herman Rubin wrote:

Gifted children do have other interests; we encourage the
gifted musicians and athletes to develop these talents, but
we strive mightily to prevent those who are academically
gifted to develop this.

There are places where gifted kids are not
supported as they should be. However, I do not understand
why you keep generalizing as if this is the case everywhere.


He's over generalizing to be sure.

But frankly, Ericka, I get a little frustrated reading again and again about
this wonderful largely (although not totally) upper and upper middle class
urban-suburban well funded school district in the American capitol by golly, as
a counter example of how wonderful things are sometimes!

How about this for kids in, say, the Burkburnett Independant School District?
(Not that I know *exactly* what they're doing right now....)

Banty

In article , Ericka Kammerer
says...

nimue wrote:
Anne Rogers wrote:
Yeah -- these are the kids who would have had reading problems
regardless of which approach was used -- and phonics still benefits
these kids more than whole language.
I think you're saying exactly what I intended to say, it really does
seem to give the best overall results for group teaching at
kindergarten age. I think a lot of children without even being taught
it are going to learn a proportion of their vocabulary by word
recognition - after
all, a good number of children can recognise their own names before
learning any phonics. My son kind of does half and half, he knows the
majority of the sounds, but a lot of the stuff he attempts to read is
single words, with some kind of context and he'll sound out the first
syllable then guess at the word from the context.

Ouch -- that's not good. I see kids in high school doing that and it really
messes with their reading comp.

But why would one assume that just because a preschooler
does this that it will be characteristic of their reading once
they're high schoolers? People do different things at different
stages.

Guessing a word is very different from
knowing a word. Guessing is NOT recognizing -- it's guessing. Granted,
these are kids with reading problems anyway,

Exactly. It's not surprising that they have adapted
long term maladaptive strategies as a result of their problems,
not necessarily because initial pre-reading experiences *caused*
their problems.

But it's clear to see why this maladaptive approach comes about. If a teaching
technique is leading a fair number of kids to use maladaptive approaches,
there's something wrong with it, no?


so perhaps someone like your
son, who doesn't have reading problems, might be able to use that method. I
guess reading may evolve into that -- after all, none of us is sounding out
the words we are reading anymore -- we just recognize them. You can't get
to whole language without phonics, however, so it's pointless to teach
something (whole language) that just evolves out of something else (phonics)
naturally.

But the point is that it *doesn't* evolve that way for all kids.
Some kids, probably those who are more visual and have excellent
memories, learn the other way around. Phonics can actually confuse
them because they're already quite proficient at reading and there
are so many exceptions to the phonics rules. At some point, they'll
either make some generalizations themselves or learn some phonics
rules as a way of dealing with novel words, but will still basically
learn to read via whole word. And frankly, there's not much you
can do to stop these kids short of refusing to read to them so that
they can't make the connections between the spoken and printed words.

There's no need to go and stop kids who are picking things up more quickly by
recognition.


I guess it's kind of like driving to a friends new home. The
first time you will need directions, need to have the way broken down and
made clear. Later, you can just drive there -- but you needed those
directions first.

But it just doesn't work that way for everyone in
reading.

Probably not. But to me the question is - which way to start?

And I also think kids who are just more memory-loaded or have more exposure to
looking at words from home reading, are taken as whole-word learners when
they're really not. (Say, possibly the early home reading they emphasize so much
nowdays makes kids seem like whole word learners!) They need those specific
directions to get somewhere. In nimue's example, one might recognize more
quickly than another that the path takes them past how Mom gets to the mall, and
therefore can put the whole map in their mind very quickly and be able rely on
that mental map. But they *still* need those initial sets of directions. And
some way to read a map or get specific directions to a totally new area.

It really is a fundamental problem with whole word - how to learn by recognition
the unfamiliar. That things are sooner or later recognized does not mean that's
how they were learned, or how the next thing should be learned.

Banty