Challenging The Gifted Child

Educating and raising gifted children presents highly specific challenges. This book explains how parents can learn to optimize their child's potential and work with schools, spouses, friends, and specialists to create a nurturing and stable life. Having a gifted child is a joy, but it is also one of the greatest challenges of parenthood to help that child find the right fit for education. In this remarkably insightful text, noted psychologist Barbara Klein, PhD, EdD, explains the emotional and social issues of giftedness, identifies parental actions and reactions that can exacerbate or soothe the challenges, and describes how these key factors tie in to identifying the best school and educational program to enable a gifted child to achieve his or her goals and maximize success. The text includes many vignettes from children and families who have sought guidance across 30 years from the author, an accomplished psychotherapist recognized as a national authority on raising gifted children. This single-volume work presents an understandable theoretical overview of the psychological problems parents face raising their gifted child and clearly explains why the parent-child interaction can be so intense and stressful—a reality that is rarely acknowledged in the existing literature on giftedness. Parents of gifted children will learn how to make decisions about their children's social emotional development and educational future and understand how their actions can be helpful or harmful to their gifted child and his/her education. Educators will fully grasp why and how gifted kids are different and why they need different educational environments, while mental heath professionals will gain insight into their gifted patients' emotional struggles. And gifted individuals will realize that others experience similar struggles.

This guide encourages and enables teachers to identify gifted children as early as age four and create a learning environment that supports all students. Proven, practical strategies and techniques help you teach to multiple intelligences, compact and extend the curriculum, communicate with parents, and more.

Gifted children are quick on the uptake, can be frustrated by repetition and easily become impatient when unchallenged. Challenging the Gifted Child outlines a tried and tested approach for encouraging able children to focus their active minds in a productive way and discover the joy and value of reading. The author explains the criteria for choosing appropriate reading for the child and describes ways to help deepen their understanding of both literature and language. Using examples from the author's extensive experience, this book encourages the development of independent learning skills and will help parents and educators to create a personalized reading programme for a gifted child at home or small groups of children in school. Photocopiable materials are included, along with samples of reading lists for different age groups. This book provides practical advice for working with advanced young readers and will be an ideal resource for anyone who has responsibility for educating a gifted child.

Challenging Highly Gifted Learners focuses on many of the issues involved in assessing and challenging highly gifted learners. A thorough discussion of the ceiling problems encountered on common assessments is included, as well as strategies for teachers and parents in planning appropriate education. This is one of the books in Prufrock Press' popular Practical Strategies Series in Gifted Education. This series offers a unique collection of tightly focused books that provide a concise, practical introduction to important topics concerning the education of gifted children. The guides offer a perfect beginner's introduction to key information about gifted and talented education.

Gifted students have the potential to learn material earlier and faster, to handle more complexity and abstraction, and to solve complex problems better. This potential, however, needs stimulating experiences from home and school or it will not unfold. These books are designed to help teachers provide the stimulating curricula that will nurture this potential in school. The units presented in this series are based on research into how these students actually think differently from their peers and how they use their learning styles and potential not merely to develop intellectual expertise, but to move beyond expertise to the production of new ideas. The Math book includes units that ask students to develop a financial portfolio that includes high- and low-risk stocks, options and margins, AAA and junk bonds, mutual funds, and money markets; use math, science, engineering, technology, and art to design and build a miniature golf course; develop games based on probability; and run a real-life small business. Grades 6-8

Why are some gifted children willing to tackle new challenges whereas others seem insecure or uninterested? Why do some gifted students achieve while others become caught in a cycle of underachievement? Are there strategies teachers and parents can implement that promote an achievement-oriented attitude? The Underachieving Gifted Child: Recognizing, Understanding, and Reversing Underachievement answers these important questions. Although there are many factors that contribute to achievement, achievement-oriented students exhibit four key traits: they believe that they have the skills to perform well, they expect that they can succeed, they believe what they are doing is meaningful, and they set realistic expectations and implement strategies to successfully complete their goals. This book offers specific strategies to help increase student achievement by improving students' attitudes in these four important areas.

First Published in 1997. Many able children are underachieving in schools because teacher and parents are failing to identify and therefore adequately provide for their special needs. This second, updated edition of Challenge of the Able Child will assist teachers in becoming more patient and observant in the classroom so that they can accurately define their objectives in providing for these children. Above all, this book aims to help teachers and parents discover the excitement, challenge and pleasure of teaching able children and helping them achieve their potential. The education of able children has moved on considerably since the first edition and this is reflected in the text with update and additions in computer technology, new resources and an expanded bibliography.

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.