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Gifted and Talented Advocates

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Sarah Kasprowicz President, Wisconsin Association for the Talented and Gifted kasprowiczs_at_merton.k12.wi.us watgpresident_at_gmail.com – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Gifted and Talented Advocates


1
Gifted and Talented Advocates
Sarah Kasprowicz President, Wisconsin
Association for the Talented and
Gifted kasprowiczs_at_merton.k12.wi.us
watgpresident_at_gmail.com
2
Topics
  • Roadblocks to differentiation
  • Training students to operate efficiently in a
    differentiated classroom
  • Management Strategies
  • Grading Issues
  • Working with colleagues and district staff
  • Communicating with parents

3
Road Blocks
  • Teacher Training
  • Fear of chaos
  • Time to work with multiple groups
  • Student behavior
  • Grading practices
  • Others?

4
Teacher Training
  • Classes about meeting the needs of gifted
    students are not required to earn a teaching
    license.
  • The vast majority of classroom teachers were not
    taught how to differentiate for gifted students
    in their university education courses.
  • Chapter 35 Special Ed class

5
Benefit of the Doubt
  • Teachers want to help the children in their
    classroom.
  • Teachers were taught in college how to meet the
    needs of students with learning disabilities and
    why it is important.
  • Given the benefit of the doubtteachers will do
    the same for gifted students when they are
    informed about gifted education.

6
Training My Students
  • Responding to Roadblocks
  • Fear of chaos
  • Time to work with all students
  • Student behavior.

I include differentiation as a classroom
expectation on the first day of school in fifth
grade.
7
Hooray for Miss Bonkers!
  • Read Hooray for Diffendoofer Day by Dr.Seuss and
    Jack Prelutsky
  • Discuss the differences between Diffendoofer
    School and Flobbertown

8
Points for Discussion
  • Differentiation is
  • Fair
  • Appropriate
  • Up to the students to handle it and do their
    job
  • More interesting than Flobbertown
  • Class, everyone turn to page 14 number 3
  • Everyone on the same page, all of the time
  • No choice

9
Points for Discussion
  • Differentiation looks like
  • At any one time there could be students working
    in any of the following situations
  • Whole class
  • Alone at a desk
  • In the library with a partner or small group
  • At a classroom computer

ALL COMBINATIONS ARE RESPECTFUL TO EACH OTHER AND
THE CLASSROOM CULTURE OF DIFFERENTIATION
10
Management Strategies
  • Expectation of Differentiated Curriculum
  • Fair
  • Normal
  • Makes sense
  • If a student abuses the situation or can not
    adjust to working in an alternate setting they
    can be returned to the regular class and make up
    what they missed.

11
Management Strategies
  • Teach students to recognize signals and
    transitions
  • Time Management
  • Calendars
  • Work / Project logs
  • Classroom Management
  • Alternate project documents and work logs are
    stapled to the wall or posted on my website for
    easy viewing and management
  • Students need to be respectful and not disrupt
    the teacher or other students

12
Handle It!(Ultimate Strategy)
  • Each student knows that the class needs to be
    able to handle the differentiation in order for
    us to continue with multiple activities at once.
  • Students help each other and police each other to
    make sure no one is disruptive or causing a
    breakdown in the system.
  • If a student cant handle it, then they return to
    the regular class for the current project and are
    given another chance to work on an alternate
    project next time.

13
Reasons for System Breakdown
  • The project was not a good match for the student.
  • The student needs more background knowledge on
    study skills and self-monitoring.
  • The partner or small group dynamics of the
    alternate project could not work independently.
    Next time the students are either placed with
    other partners, or the group is given more
    instruction on group dynamics and responsibility
    before proceeding with a new topic.

14
My Classroom
  • Merton Community School District (Waukesha
    County)
  • 5th and 6th Grade Looping
  • 21 students
  • 11 students on our districts Strengths List
  • 1 student with an IEP for a language-based
    learning disability
  • I teach all subjects except social studies I
    switch with another teacher for science and
    social studies.

15
Example
  • Fifth Grade Reading / Language Arts
  • Taylor Working on her R-Word website and pledge
    campaign
  • Henry Working on his video blog about
    skateboarding
  • Gabby and Jorja are working on their blogs and
    news articles for our district website.
  • 17 students having literature circle meetings
    with Mrs. K circulating and listening
  • 1 student working with our LD teacher on language
    arts

16
Flexible Grouping
  • Interest (Taylor and Henry)
  • Past performance on reading assessments (Jorja
    and Gabby)
  • Students are allowed to sometimes pass on
    alternate projects

17
Modify Our Grading Practices
  • Responding to Roadblocks
  • Grading
  • Fear of chaos
  • Time to work with all students
  • Time to do anythinganything at all! ?

18
Grading Issues
  • Release Yourself!
  • Teachers dont need to
  • Fill in each space in our grade book
  • Assign practice that some
  • students dont need
  • Manage every detail
  • Create every project
  • Write every rubric
  • Collaborate with your students, another teacher
    or find a rubric online to use or modify to fit
    your purpose.

19
Recording Grades
  • GT students will have fewer grades.
  • GT students are excused from daily work grades.
  • GT students will have scores for
  • Pretests
  • Post-tests
  • Alternate projects

20
Grade Book Tips
  • Leave the excused boxes BLANK.
  • Use different colors of ink to code tiered
    assignments and projects.
  • Use Webgrader features to assign students to
    assignments and excuse students from daily work.
  • Keep a separate class list in your grade book to
    keep track of alternate project grades

21
Colleagues and District Staff
  • Communicate classroom needs to
  • Librarian and library staff
  • Technology department
  • Principal
  • Gifted and Talented Coordinator
  • Curriculum Coordinator
  • Team members There are possible partners for
    your students in other homerooms
  • Parents

22
Communicating With Parents
  • Parent / Teacher Conferences
  • Feedback from parents on possible interests and
    strengths of their child
  • Webnotes
  • Email
  • Ask parents to sign proposed alternate project
    descriptions, calendar, rubrics before students
    participate
  • Ask parent volunteers to work with small groups
    in the library or computer lab

23
Setting the Stage in Your School
  • The Pyramids
  • Wisconsin Pyramid Model for Gifted and Talented
    Programming
  • Response to Intervention (RtI)

24
RTI
GT
In Addition
Instead
District Curriculum Tier I and Level 1 All
students experience differentiated lessons
Level 2
Tier 2
Level 3
Tier 3
Tier 2
IEP
DEP
Universal Screening
25
Setting the Stage in Your School
  • The GT Advocate Model
  • Classroom-based
  • Gifted and Talented Student Strengths Lists
  • Several years of professional development

26
GT Advocate Activities
  • Press Room website
  • Meet with teachers during their prep
  • Meet with students during the day to design
    alternate projects
  • Communicate needs to our GT Coordinator
  • Monitor Strengths list and match opportunities to
    students
  • Publish GT Advocate Updates

27
Ideas for Advocates
  • Send links
  • Offer to collaborate on project/rubric design
  • E-mails asking if teachers are concerned about
    students
  • Offer to attend parent/teacher conferences
  • E-mail students directly
  • Share differentiated units/curriculum you are
    using and offer to help modify for different
    grade levels

28
Ideas for Advocates
  • Be available before or after school to share
    information, resources, handouts from conferences
  • Ask your principal to cover your class while you
    meet with staff or students
  • Teach a class in your district
  • Create an online class and share access with your
    teachers
  • Hire subs for collaborative planning time

29
Friday Projects
  • Responding to Roadblocks
  • Fear of chaos
  • Time to work with all students
  • Advantage
  • Solves the problem of Im done. What do I do
    now?

30
Web 2.0 Collaboration Expression
  • Google Sites
  • Voice Thread
  • Skype
  • Forums
  • Wikis
  • Blogs

31
Staff Development
  • A paradigm shift is needed from pull out to
    classroom based approach. This can take years.
  • University Courses
  • District initiative
  • CESA
  • Conferences
  • Consultants

32
Setting the Stage in the Community
  • The Press Room
  • The Merton Community School District Press Room
    is a district-wide opportunity to integrate all
    subject areas and involve students K-8 in
    promoting and publishing the work of Merton
    students.
  • Press Room Website

33
More Details Needed?
  • What are your questions?
  • What kind of resources do you have available?

34
Thank You!
  • Questions?
  • Please feel free to contact me.
  • Sarah Kasprowicz
  • WATG President
  • watgpresident_at_gmail.com
  • kasprowiczs_at_merton.k12.wi.us
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