The sign announcing the Gifted Homeschoolers Forum September blog hop on the topic ‘Giftedness- why does it matter?’ had been posted and the characters at Sprite’s Site were busy discussing it.
“Giftedness matters because, to quote the Columbus Group definition, the gifted need modifications in parenting, teaching and counselling in order to develop optimally” said the Psych-Owl-Ogist.
“It was certainly very helpful for us to have the tweetlets assessed by the Psych-Owl-Ogist and to learn about giftedness” Retweet said “Before we did that everyone said that they were just being naughty or neurotic and blamed our parenting. But when we found out it helped us to be more understanding and also to make decisions about how they should be educated”
“It also matters because there are so many myths and so much misinformation about giftedness” said Columbus Cheetah.
http://www.giftedresources.org/gr/columbuscheetah.htm
“We have people saying everyone is gifted or nobody is gifted. We have people saying you can create giftedness by practice and attitude. We have people saying it does not matter whether you identify giftedness if you differentiate. We have people saying you should give all students exactly the same programs and people saying gifted do not need any different treatment.”
“But we know from the Columbus group definition that the gifted need modifications in parenting, teaching and counselling in order to develop optimally”
“It is especially important in the case of 2E students like Sprite” said Columbus Cheetah. “If their giftedness is not recognized only their learning difficulties and differences get noticed and they are put into remedial groups and not given appropriate challenges. Or else the difficulties mask the giftedness and the giftedness enables the student to hide the difficulties and the student appears average and receives no modifications at all.”
“That is why initial assessment with a psychologist who specialises in gifted and 2E issues and ongoing evaluation and treatment with an education consultant can be so helpful. 2E students need to be allowed to work at their level of ability while receiving support for their difficulties. Sometimes special services or funding is available for the students whose needs qualify them to receive them”
That is why Sprite went back to see Dr Ed Needs recently for progressive achievement testing and planning the next stages of her education.
We are planning Sprite’s education programs http://www.giftedresources.org/gr/feetspeakforweb01.htm using De Bono’s 6 Action Shoes as the planning tool and checking the effectiveness of the programs using Gagne’s DMGT model. We need to make both suitable provisions for both her giftedness and support measures for her difficulties.
We talked about the topic of Identification of gifted students recently on Twitter #gtchat.
The transcript can be found here https://storify.com/gtchatmod/gtchat-gifted-identification
A review of the chat and additional information links will be found on the #gtchat blog at http://globalgtchatpoweredbytagt.wordpress.com/
This is a post for the Gifted Homeschoolers Forum September Blog Hop.
Please join us on the hop and read and comment on the posts.
To find all the posts in the hop please follow the links at http://giftedhomeschoolers.org/blog-hops/giftedness-why-matters/
Sprite's Site 
Some kind of assessment to determine gifted characteristics and abilities helps me do my job so much more effectively. Thank you for enlightening people to this important point.
What an excellent summary of why giftedness matters! I can always count on the characters at Sprite’s Site to make things understandable in a clear and concise way. I appreciate their straight-forward approach to this topic. The Columbus Group definition is near and dear to my heart as both an advocate for gifted children and as a mother. Thank you so much for sharing Sprite and her friends with us!
Thank you, Lisa! And thank you for your excellent moderation of #gtchat
Thank you for this!!
Modification in parenting and education is precisely why I radically unschool my two profoundly gifted children. Traditional one-size-fits-all parenting and education failed my children. Now they are free to explore their world, satiate their minds and develop their intelligence on their own terms and on their own time schedule.
That is what I loved about homeschooling – there were no bells ringing to say they must move to another subject when they were completely engaged with the current one
Just checking in to see how you all are. I still have more posts to visit on the GHF September blog hop then I will be back to tell you about it and answer my comments mail
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