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Writer's pictureElena

High ability: educational responses

Children who have high abilities demand educational responses. There is no point in teaching them in a slow-paced fashion. They need to be engaged in more challenging content and provided with tasks that spark their interests.


The following are some interventions to consider.


Acceleration

The acceleration aims at promoting students' educational advancement at a higher speed than regulations typically allow. It includes grade skipping, content-level acceleration, curriculum compacting.



Grouping

The grouping consists of creating different groups within the classroom according to the level or ability of the students; or providing students with full-time or part-time education separate from their regular classrooms.



Enrichment

Enriched curriculum refers to richer, more varied educational experiences, a curriculum that has been modified or added to in some way (Schiever and Maker, 1997: 113).


There are three approaches to enrichment:

1 - process oriented (the development of students' higher mental processes),

2 - content oriented (the presentation of a particular content area),

3 - product oriented (the emphasis is on the result, e.g. a presentation, report, painting).


Certain approaches to enrichment are integrating process, content and product orientations.


Process

Clark and Shore point out that "high-ability students can use more of their time to develop higher order skills, as described in Bloom’s taxonomy, which include the ability to question, evaluate, speculate, analyse, transfer ideas and skills to another curriculum area and make links between their learning in curriculum areas" (2004: 43).


Content

Renzulli and Reis (1997: 148) explain that learning is more meaningful and enjoyable when content and process are learned within the context of a real and present problem.


Product

A major goal is to enhance knowledge and thinking skills through applications of knowledge and skills (Renzulli and Reis, 1997: 148).


The enrichment response is a systematic set of strategies that is designed to promote active engagement in learning and involves the implementation of activities which add depth to certain aspects of the curriculum. It is constructed around the interests of children and/or what teachers determine to be appropriate content.


The choice of which approach would be desirable depends on the student, the school, the family, the educational system, and the country's legislation. However, addressing the needs of high ability students is often a patchwork of what is available in school.

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