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.




Enriching the Learning


Book Description

Rely on Enriching the Learning to help your school community answer critical question 4 of the Professional Learning Communities at Work(R) process: How will we extend the learning for students who have demonstrated proficiency? The book's wide range of student enrichment strategies, templates, and tools is designed to fully prepare collaborative teams to plan and execute engaging extensions for any subject area or grade level. Lesson extensions and student engagement strategies for teaching proficient students in a PLC: Develop an understanding of the fourth question of a Professional Learning Community (PLC) at Work and why it is the most poorly addressed of the foundational PLC questions. Understand the importance of engaging proficient students in extended lessons and continuing their education. Learn how to differentiate instruction, enrich the curriculum, and build lesson extensions that will push proficient students to extend their abilities. Become familiar with three different extension models (skill extensions, interest extensions, and social extensions) and numerous strategies for implementation that integrate student voice and choice. Utilize the reproducible extension-planning templates and completed examples to build your own lesson extensions for personalized learning. Contents: Introduction Chapter 1: Addressing the Forgotten Question Chapter 2: Identifying Question 4 Students and Intentionally Planning Extensions Chapter 3: Creating Skill Extensions Chapter 4: Creating Interest Extensions Chapter 5: Helping Students Connect Through Social Extensions Chapter 6: Creating Extensions as Singletons Epilogue




The Schoolwide Enrichment Model


Book Description

The Schoolwide Enrichment Model: A How-to Guide for Talent Development (3rd ed.) presents a common sense approach for helping students achieve and engage in joyful learning. Based on years of research, the Schoolwide Enrichment Model (SEM) is founded on highly successful practices originally developed for programs for gifted students. The SEM promotes “a rising tide lifts all ships” approach to school improvement by applying general enrichment strategies to all students and opportunities for advanced level follow-up opportunities for superior learners and highly motivated students. This guidebook shows educators step by step how to develop their own SEM program based on their own local resources, student population, and faculty strengths and interests. Instead of offering students a one-size-fits-all curriculum, the model helps educators look at each student's strengths, interests, learning styles, and preferred modes of expression and capitalize on these assets. The book highlights the model's fundamentals and underlying research and provides information about organizational components, service delivery options, and resources for implementation. The book suggests methods for engaging and challenging identified gifted students and provides practical resources for teachers using the SEM with all students.




Math on the Move


Book Description

"Kids love to move. But how do we harness all that kinetic energy effectively for math learning? In Math on the Move, Malke Rosenfeld shows how pairing math concepts and whole body movement creates opportunities for students to make sense of math in entirely new ways. Malke shares her experience creating dynamic learning environments by: exploring the use of the body as a thinking tool, highlighting mathematical ideas that are usefully explored with a moving body, providing a range of entry points for learning to facilitate a moving math classroom. ..."--Publisher description.




Enrichment Activities for Gifted Students


Book Description

Enrichment Activities for Gifted Students outlines a variety of extracurricular academic activities and programming options for gifted student talent development. This book: Includes strategies for educators to develop enrichment programs that fit the needs of their students. Provides numerous examples of nationally-recognized and easy-to-implement programs and competitions. Helps promote students' academic growth. Categorizes options by subject area, including math, science, technology, language arts, and social studies. Categorizes options by skill type, including creative thinking, problem solving, and adaptability. Enrichment Activities for Gifted Students provides everything busy educators need to know about offering, funding, and supporting enrichment activities and programs that develop students' content knowledge and expertise, build valuable real-world skills, and extend learning beyond the walls of the classroom.




Gifted?: The shift to enrichment, challenge and equity


Book Description

'Gifted and talented' is a zombie. It is dead, but still walking around. There are new labels to stratify students - 'more able', 'significantly able', 'high-aptitude learners'. New labels do not equal new thinking. The concept of 'gifted' is still stubbornly embedded in our educational structures, with its legacy of social immobility, racism and sexism. Students can be 'more able' when they have more financial resources, more access, more visibility, or more cultural acceptance. There are pervasive narratives that educators should prioritise extension for some students and not others. We can dispel the myth that pitching lessons judiciously to 'middle ability', and then differentiating up and down, is effective. This book explores how we can provide every student with rigorous challenge. Challenge for all is an inclusive approach to teaching, whereby every student is invited, and given the tools, to reach a place of mastery. This can be through project-based learning, Harkness round-tables, oracy, adaptive teaching, inclusive enrichment programs, dynamic classroom strategies and a schoolwide mission for equity. Educators can embed powerful knowledge into the curriculum, reimagine teaching to the top, and stretch learners through personalised and responsive instruction. The shift to enrichment, challenge and equity creates magnificent possibilities. The message to all students is: you belong here.




The Biggest Pumpkin Ever


Book Description

Two mice, a village mouse and a field mouse, unwittingly care for the same pumpkin and have different plans for it until they finally meet.




From the Brain to the Classroom


Book Description

Supplying a foundation for understanding the development of the brain and the learning process, this text examines the physical and environmental factors that influence how we acquire and retain information throughout our lives. The book also lays out practical strategies that educators can take directly into the classroom. Comprising more than 100 entries, From the Brain to the Classroom: The Encyclopedia of Learning gathers experts in the fields of education, neuroscience, and psychology to examine how specific areas of the brain work in thought processes, and identifies how educators can apply what neuroscience has discovered to refine their teaching and instructional techniques. The wide range of subjects—organized within the main categories of student characteristics, classroom instructional topics, and learning challenges—include at-risk behaviors; cognitive neuroscience; autism; the lifespan of the brain, from prenatal brain development to the aging brain; technology-based learning tools; and addiction. Any reader who is interested in learning about how the brain works and how it relates to everyday life will find this work fascinating, while educators will find this book particularly helpful in validating or improving their teaching methods to increase academic achievement.




Engaging & Challenging Gifted Students


Book Description

Though nearly 5 million students can be characterized as gifted and talented in the United States, many exceptional learners "fly under the radar." Because they are not appropriately challenged in the general classroom, they never meet their full potential--in school or in life. Author Jenny Grant Rankin equips general classroom teachers with the information and strategies they need to spot, advocate for, engage, and challenge exceptional learners in their classrooms. Learn how to recognize the challenges of each child, identify the five unexpected traits of exceptional learners, and adjust your teaching to meet the needs of all learners. Filled with useful strategies and poignant personal accounts, this book gives you the "meat" of what you need to prevent those students who need to be challenged and engaged from slipping through the cracks.