1) What is something that surprised you or that you learned from the videos? What myth or prior belief do you find out was false and what is the reality?
> One thing that I was surprised to learn from these videos on gifted and talented students was that the "new normal" is recognized as anxiety and fear of trying new things. This really made me self-reflect a bit about my own educational experiences. I was a straight A student in grade school. And when I clearly understood class material, I was confident and would often tutor my friends in math and on class projects. But when I did not understand something, I was awkward and easily frustrated and definitely felt anxious about class. This is exactly what the video was talking about with gifted students. I did have a perfectionist outlook on school and grades. I guess I always knew I was a good student, but this video kind of brought it all together for me.
> Additionally, I found this sentence from the video quite provoking: "we can't hold bad academic challenges based on their emotional or social levels". As a teacher, we can easily recognize students who are "outcasts" or "loners". But just because they prefer to work on their own doesn't mean they are less gifted academically. According to this video, it's actually quite the opposite. Choosing to work individually is normal for gifted students. We need to continue to challenge these students as much as we would with others who are more social and outgoing.
2) How can you use what you learned in your present and future classrooms? How can technology play a part? Be specific.
> I will use this in my gym classroom when allowing students to work individually or with groups. We often do fitness activities where students can choose to work individually on activities or by themselves. I can already imagine the handful of kids in my placement classroom that would work individually.. This is a great opportunity for the teacher to build student-teacher relationships. I would participate with these students to try to get to know them better and motivate them to try harder and/or think of new ways to accomplish the same task. This would challenge them in a way that maybe their peers would not.
> Playing online games with friends from all over the world can help these students not feel so isolated. During PE, we sometimes use technology for virtual fitness, such as "Adventures to Fitness". These videos are led by an adventurer who teaches the students about everything from history and geology to biology of animals across the globe. This could be especially effective for gifted students at the elementary level because there is a lot of advanced knowledge embedded into the class video. So although the exercises are easy, the advanced knowledge base within the video is a good challenge for the gifted students.
Hannah, I'm not going to lie I was curious as to how this blog topic was going to play out in the non-core-four (math, science, english, social studies). But your implementation of this knowledge in your content far exceeds my expectation. This "Adventures to Fitness" video series is rather intriguing. Is it something like on youtube accessible to the public or is this something that requires purchasing? I'm wondering if this could be something assigned for students to do as homework because too often the standard for homework is sitting down at the table hunched over a book or packet. Something that involves some physical activity may be more engaging for a majority of students.
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering if the use of the word "gifted" in the context of P.E. should still apply to the same people. From the videos we watched the term gifted seems to apply to students who are cognitively more advanced or developed in terms of "book smarts" (i know that isn't the right way to put it but I can't think of any other way at the moment). Could gifted apply to students who have a knack for physical activity or certain games/sports? How would this change the conversation and accommodations?
Sam, good questions. While not all gifted students are high achieving athletically, some are, just as in the general population. Think of gifted as a different way to experience the world - different feelings about things, different thoughts and connections made, etc. It is the way the brain is wired and studies show the gifted brain looks different than the average brain in scans when observing how they work, and they have many more times the connections in the brain.
DeleteI love how you have found a way to incorporate technology in PE class! I am wondering the same thing as Sam... how does this Adventures to Fitness work? It is also cool how it integrates other content. One thing we talked about in another class is how many times PE is asked to incorporate other content areas into their class, but it sounds like this might be something that could be shown in a history class for example, as a way for them to incorporate PE into their core classroom.
DeleteI can see giftedness translating to athletics. I get good grades, but I am far from gifted; I'm slower at making connections, and this is true for PE to. It takes me a long time to figure out how to master different physical activities/exercises that are new to me, just like it is hard for me to learn new math concepts. I can see how someone who is gifted and makes these connections easier would be able to pick up on the many different, sometimes complicated, routines and exercises that may be used in PE.
I thought some of the class might self-identify as many times the gifted are not identified when younger. :)
ReplyDeleteI like your ideas to extend the curriculum. In other lessons, open ended questions can be good for higher level thinkers as well. Good post!
I like your idea of continuing to challenge these gifted students who want to work alone to work in groups. My CT takes an interesting approach to some of her group work that I think might help these students be able to work collaboratively. For example, in our Holocaust unit each group is assigned a survivor and they each have to create a brochure that details their survivors biography, timeline of dates, hiding spot and they have to tie in a personal connection with the survivor. The group then presents together, but each person presents on one of their areas - so one student reads their biography, another their personal connection, etc. So they can work as a group to gather information and talk about their person, but in the end they get graded on their own brochure and their part of the presentation. I wonder if doing this type of group work would encourage gifted students to work on group work collaborative skills, but also not have to worry about their grade being effected by other students' performance. Do you think you'd be able to incorporate something like that into the PE classroom?
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