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Showing posts with label AVAST. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AVAST. Show all posts

Monday, 19 December 2016

EXCEPTIONALLY GIFTED STUDENTS IN THE ENGLISH CLASSROOM.

Teaching is one of the most plural job fields that we can find at our society. Education must be integrative and inclusive: everybody has a place in it and is our task as future teachers make the students equal among themselves and with the rest of the society. In this sense, the role of the teacher as a social equalizer is essential.

That is the reason why we received a very interesting talk about one of the collective that is not always mentioned in that inclusion task that we pointed before: the exceptionally gifted students.
We welcomed in our classroom to María Luz Bueno, one member of the AVAST association (Asociación Valenciana de Apoyo al Superdotado y Talentoso) in order to enlarge our view of what educational needs means.

It was an enriching experience, a dialogue based on the exchange of ideas and own experiences in order to demystify the main prejudices of this type of students like “they always belong to high social classes” or “they don’t have friends” . It was also a great chance to know and review the different laws which try to manage with exceptionally gifted students, making emphasis in the inclusion tasks.

The interventions of our peers were extremely interesting, they were focused on how identify an exceptionally gifted student in our day-by-day lessons and how to deal with this type of children in the English subject. There was also a group curiosity of how to develop strategies to interact and how to make the lessons exciting for them. And it was at that point when the importance of the English language was high-lighted: languages are transversal and it could be applied to the rest of high-school subjects. So the learning of a new language could be the perfect starting situation to propose challenge for exceptionally gifted students.


Finally we met the different methodologies that we can use in the classroom: like the ones related with new technologies or new ways of regarding education some of them such interesting as flipped classroom) or the ideological gatherings.



Saturday, 17 December 2016

GIFTED CHILDREN. DIFFERENT MINDS.

AVAST: Asociación Valenciana de Apoyo al Superdotado y Talentoso


ORIENTACIONES PARA LA ATENCIÓN EDUCATIVA DEL ALUMNADO CON ALTAS CAPACIDADES (M. Luz Bueno).


What comes to your mind when you think of gifted children?
“Someone who wears glasses and reads many books”











Let’s see more myths:
“They seem arrogant”
“They usually have problems socializing with people”
“They are swots”
“They start to learn alone. They don’t need help”
“The family stimulates them too much”
“You don’t have to tell them that they are gifted children because they will feel different or they will think they are better than everyone else”
“They normally have many emotional problems”
“They don’t have friends”
“If they have friends, they are not gifted children”
“They are extremely motivated by learning”
“They have an innate learning”
“They come from high social classes”
“Being a gifted child is a guarantee of success”
“They only have advantages”
“Being a gifted girl is less common”


What is the difference between an inclusive school and school integration?
School integration means that we all have an equal education. In contrast, an inclusive school means that everyone has what he/she needs.


Do the gifted children have the right to have an specific education?
If we observe the Gaussian Distribution of Intelligence, we see that the majority of the population (95%) has an IQ between 70 and 130. On the left side, about 2% have a low IQ (under 70). On the right side, about 2% have an extremelly IQ (above 130).
Can the ones that are on the left side attend a normal classroom? They have a different learning pace. In this sense, we have to bear into mind that the ones on the right also have a different learning pace.
The education system should provide adequate education for the majority of children.














How can we identify a gifted child?

They usually present an early development of the language and they are very creative.
"They optimise to the maximum all they have in their surroundings"

Some of the problems they may present are the following:

Academic level
  • Demotivation
  • Educational underachievement
  • No capacity for effort
  • Fear of failure (perfectionism)
  • Low frustration tolerance
  • Unnoticed capacity
  • SCHOOL FAILURE
Social level
  • A desire to be like the others
  • Misbehaviour, verbal aggression, passivity (an easy target for bullies)
  • The clown of the classroom
  • Hidden talents (fear of not being accepted)
  • Psychosomatic problems
  • LOW SELF-STEEM, MISUNDERSTOOD, UNHAPPY

What is GLD? Gifted with a Learning Disability. It seems a paradox. However, there are children who are both gifted and learning disabled and exhibit remarkable talents or strengths in some areas and disabling weaknesses in others. These children are also referred to as “twice exceptional”, and “double labelled”. Some of the examples are the following:
  • Dyslexia
  • ADD/ADHD
  • Asperger
  • Physical or sensory impairment

What should draw our attention?
  • Overactive behaviour
  • A highly developed vocabulary and the ability to learn new words easily
  • Attention deficit disorder
  • They are very curious
  • The ability to ask questions that show advanced insight or understanding
  • Creative thinking
  • Demotivation (grades start to fall)

What should we do once we identify a gifted child?
  • We should talk to their parents
  • The psycho-pedagogical department should be involved
  • We should advice parents to go to a specific educational association to obtain more information. In the case of Valencia, we can find AVAST (the Valencian Association for Gifted and Talented Children).