Teach for Attention!


Book Description

A lively read from a working teacher offers practical engagement strategies for students with attention challenges If learning is a motor, student engagement is the key. But when teaching students with ADHD and other attention challenges, sometimes even the most finely tuned classroom can sputter. Teach for Attention! is your tool belt of teaching strategies for students with ADHD, low self-confidence, distraction, and other attention challenges. Dozens of true classroom stories show the strategies in action. It’s all about making simple fixes so you can reach every student without changing your approach or revamping your curriculum. Carry these ideas with you like tools on a belt—the right one will be there when you need it!




Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom


Book Description

Since 1992, TEACHING GIFTED KIDS IN THE REGULAR CLASSROOM has been the definitive guide to meeting the learning needs of gifted students in the mixed-abilities classroom. This revised, expanded, and updated edition of the proven best-seller includes new chapters on the characteristics of gifted students and parenting gifted kids. Throughout, the compacting and differentiating strategies that were the core of the first edition have been greatly expanded. Also included are many new forms that teachers will use every day.




Teaching Gifted Kids in Today's Classroom


Book Description

Fully revised and updated for a new generation of educators, this is the definitive guide to meeting the learning needs of gifted students in the mixed-abilities classroom— seamlessly and effectively with minimal preparation time. Included are practical, classroom-tested strategies and step-by-step instructions for how to use them. The new edition provides information on using technology for accelerated learning, managing cluster grouping, increasing curriculum rigor, improving assessments, boosting critical and creative thinking skills, and addressing gifted kids with special needs. Already a perennial best seller, this guide’s third edition is sure to be welcomed with open arms by teachers everywhere. Digital content provides a PowerPoint presentation for professional development, customizable reproducible forms from the book, additional extension menus for students in the primary and upper-elementary grades, and a special supplement for parents of gifted children.




Gifted Education in Rural Schools


Book Description

This text draws on data from a five-year longitudinal study focusing on gifted education programs in high poverty rural areas in the US. It provides a framework for the use of place-based interventions to effectively serve gifted students, reduce opportunity gaps, and address stereotype threat. Recognizing that gifted learners are often underrepresented in rural contexts, the text adopts a social justice lens to outline the unique challenges of fostering advanced education in rural school districts. Using opportunities to learn and best practices in gifted education to inform interventions and practice, the text offers in-depth explanation of how place-based approaches can be used to identify gifted students and ensure that curricula are designed to respect the setting, students, and teachers. The text is structured into three parts, providing the reader with a logical and comprehensive progression through theoretical foundations, the practicalities of implementation, and the process and outcomes of measuring and validating outcomes. Given its unique approach to gifted education programs, this book will prove to be an indispensable and timely resource for scholars working to develop gifted education and educational interventions with and for rural schools.




A Field Guide to Gifted Students


Book Description

A Field Guide to Gifted Students is a practical manual to the unique characteristics of gifted and advanced learners. Presented as a concise 32-page, full-color booklet available in sets of 10 print copies or a single eBook copy, this resource: Can be used in teacher workshops and other group professional learning settings. Assists educators in understanding and meeting the academic and social-emotional needs of gifted students. Includes a companion online facilitator's guide. Features practical tips based on current research and best practices. Is packed with illustrations, checklists, space to write notes, and a glossary of terms. School can feel like the wrong fit for many gifted learners, but through learning how to notice and support gifted students' diverse traits and needs, educators can build ideal classroom climates for student success. Readers will understand how to identify giftedness and related traits, including twice-exceptionality, introversion and extroversion, perfectionism, sensitivity, and intuitiveness. The online facilitator's guide includes everything workshop leaders need to conduct a brief course for classroom teachers, coordinators, counselors, or even parents.




Enrichment Clusters


Book Description

Enrichment clusters engage students and facilitators in student-driven, real-world learning experiences. Grouped by interest, students working like practicing professionals apply advanced content and methods to develop products and services for authentic audiences. Clusters are scheduled during the school day over an extended period of time and involve all students. This updated second edition of Enrichment Clusters provides the rationale for including this important enrichment program for all students, suggestions for creating buy-in, and a step-by-step guide for successful implementation of a self-sustaining enrichment cluster program within the context of specific schools. Included are staff development activities, suggestions for evaluation and program improvement, guidelines for developing high quality cluster experiences for teachers and students, suggested resources, and everything one needs to develop, implement, and sustain a top-quality enrichment cluster program.




Brain-Friendly Strategies for the Inclusion Classroom


Book Description

Many teachers in regular classrooms feel unprepared to teach students with learning disabilities. Fortunately, brain research has confirmed that strategies benefiting learners with special challenges are suited for engaging and stimulating all learners. In this book, neurologist and classroom teacher Judy Willis explains that we can best help students by putting in place strategies, accommodations, and interventions that provide developmentally and academically appropriate challenges to suit the needs, gifts, and goals of each student. Brain-Friendly Strategies for the Inclusion Classroom will help teachers * Understand how the brain learns and the technologies that reveal this process. * Implement strategies that are compatible with students' individual learning styles and honor their multiple intelligences. * Improve the focus of students with attention disorders and help them gain the confidence and skills they need to develop goal-oriented behaviors. * Create an enriching learning environment by incorporating student-centered activities, discovery and hands-on learning experiences, cross-curricular learning, and multisensory lessons. * Implement strategic review, study, and test preparation strategies that will allow students to retain information and connect it with future learning. * Build safe, supportive classroom communities and raise class awareness and empathy for students with learning disabilities. It's time for teachers to lower the barriers, not the bar. Using strategies that align with research on how people's brains function, teachers can engage all students as individuals and help them reach their maximum potential with joy and confidence.




How the Gifted Brain Learns


Book Description

Identify, understand, and engage the full range of gifted learners with practical, brain-compatible classroom strategies! The updated edition of Sousa’s bestseller translates the latest neuroscientific findings into practical strategies for engaging gifted and talented learners. Individual chapters are dedicated to talents in language, math, and the arts, and offer instructional applications for both elementary and secondary classrooms. This reader-friendly guide uncovers: How the brains of gifted students are different How to gauge if gifted students are being adequately challenged How to identify students who are both gifted and learning disabled How to better identify gifted minority students




Keeping Track


Book Description

Selected by the American School Board Journal as a “Must Read” book when it was first published and named one of 60 “Books of the Century” by the University of South Carolina Museum of Education for its influence on American education, this provocative, carefully documented work shows how tracking—the system of grouping students for instruction on the basis of ability—reflects the class and racial inequalities of American society and helps to perpetuate them. For this new edition, Jeannie Oakes has added a new Preface and a new final chapter in which she discusses the “tracking wars” of the last twenty years, wars in which Keeping Track has played a central role. From reviews of the first edition:“Should be read by anyone who wishes to improve schools.”—M. Donald Thomas, American School Board Journal“[This] engaging [book] . . . has had an influence on educational thought and policy that few works of social science ever achieve.”—Tom Loveless in The Tracking Wars“Should be read by teachers, administrators, school board members, and parents.”—Georgia Lewis, Childhood Education“Valuable. . . . No one interested in the topic can afford not to attend to it.”—Kenneth A. Strike, Teachers College Record




Playing Favorites


Book Description

Playing Favorites examines the ways in which gifted education disrupts the classroom community, deskills regular classroom teachers, limits their ability and willingness to meet individual needs, and impairs the creation of a climate of inclusion and acceptance of difference. Sapon-Shevin shows here that current models of gifted education are elitist and meritocratic, treating some children, not just differently than others, but better; and that in large urban districts, gifted education programs are often racist as well. By creating and funding gifted programs, the author contends, schools engage in a form of "educational triage," serving those children for whom inadequate programming and educational failure would not be acceptable while maintaining the status quo for the majority of the school population. This book provides support for teachers, parents, and administrators who have found themselves caught in the struggle of insuring an appropriate education for some children without sacrificing the good of all. Incorporating the words of teachers, parents, and students, as well as related research and theory, this book analyzes the relationship between diversity, community, and social justice. Sapon-Shevin challenges the reader to reconsider ways in which schools can meet individual educational needs while preserving communities of learners as well as the commitment to the education of all children. Finally, the book extends the challenge and assurance that we need not choose between quality education for some and mediocre education for all.