How do we make connections with gifted learners through the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) to enable effective teaching in the classroom?
New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) states that the individual student should be at the centre of all teaching and learning. Students are to be acknowledged and celebrated for who they are, what they come to the classroom with and their curriculum needs to be compelling and challenging so they can ‘achieve personal excellence’. This is true for all students, and therefore is true for gifted learners in NZ classrooms.
A ministry of education report found that for gifted learners differentiation is needed. This means that pedagogical approaches and the gifted learners learning experiences need to be altered to each individual learner.
While gifted learners may have access to programmes that cater more directly to their needs (such as MindPlus), gifted learners are only able to access these options for one day a week. Given that the NZC is for all children, and gifted learners will be in NZ classrooms for the majority of their time, finding ways of connecting the gifted learner to the NZC is relevant and necessary. This requires the use of an individual education plan (IEP) for a learner that is identified as gifted.
Embracing the te tiriti o Waitangi principle of partnership a teacher must build a relationship with the whanau of the gifted learner as well as the gifted learner themselves. Whanau will have an understanding of the gifted learner that will be invaluable and working collaboratively with a child’s teacher by contributing their knowledge and understanding of the learner will be in the best interests of the gifted learner.
A individual education plan (IEP) that combines information contributed from parents, relevant teaching staff and the child him/herself can help to inform goals and strategies that can make connections to prior learning. Creating a IEP can be one tool for giving a student the opportunity to make decisions about their own learning, especially if this is using a strengths based approach, drawing on what the child is already interested in.
The NZC promotes teaching as inquiry, so the goals and strategies from the IEP can be used as a starting point to inform consultative reflection between the whanau, student and teacher, adjusting goals and strategies based on the results of inquiry.
A gifted learner may have gifts in many learning areas, or just one or two. One learning area a gifted learner may be gifted in is English. As an example a child who is in a classroom of students expected to be working at level 2 of the English curriculum may be easily able to fulfil the learning objectives of “constructing texts that demonstrate a growing awareness of audience and purpose through appropriate choice of content, language and text form”. In fact they could conceivably be at a level 3 level in this area of the English curriculum (speaking, writing and presenting).
The thesis of Jami Kimbrough Wallace Gifted and Talented Education in Aotearoa New Zealand: A Primary School Perspective suggests that gifted learners benefit from having their work be real-world products and gives the example of a gifted writer being able to publish in a newspaper. Challenging the gifted learner to link their writing to real world situations, or be used in a real life way may help create a more meaningful learning experience. Given that the NZC has a vision of students being “actively involved” in a range of life contexts, this child may be able to use their gift of writing to inform others about issues such as the importance of te tiriti o Waitangi in NZ education (if they were interested in this subject). One of the key aspects of supporting gifted learners in their learning is allow for topics that are of particular interest to the learner to be used to enable curricula learning to occur.
While expecting a gifted learner to fulfil the NZC criteria of ‘showing understanding of ideas within, across and beyond texts’ expanding their creativity by using the S.C.A.M.P.E.R. technique mentioned in Nurturing gifted and talented children may help to keep them engaged in their learning. The S.C.A.M.P.E.R. technique takes a story and increases the thinking about the story and the creative expression of the student by asking the student to change aspects of the story and reflect (perhaps through writing their own adaptation). Using a technique like this can allow the gifted learner to think more broadly, and support them to express unusual ways of problem solving. Examples of this are fairy tales that have been re-told with different endings, or the characters having different personality traits to the original story.
By engaging a gifted learner in a fun activity (such as S.C.A.M.P.E.R.) where the narrative can be altered in many different ways encourages fluency (generating many ideas and possibilities) and flexibility.
This may also lead to supporting a gifted child in learning more about the key competency of ‘Relating to others’ because parallels can be made by changing the story and seeing things from different perspectives to opening up the possibility of seeing things from others points of view. A useful skill in relating to others.
The NZ government has allocated funding for gifted learners. Some of this funding is going into programmes such as one day school. It is
now a NAG (National Administrative Guideline) requirement to identify gifted learners (being recognised that they have special needs) and respond to their differentiated needs. I hope there is also funding for PLD for teachers so we can be empowered in our responsibilities.