Much research supports the benefits that quality professional development plays in impacting teacher quality. Experiences in professional development can affect a teacher's growth, the application of varied instructional techniques, and increase student learning. When professional development is well-planned, it can provide purpose, collaboration,…

Most educators who work with gifted students acknowledge the importance of creativity and have found various ways to include it as part of the gifted education curriculum. In many cases, however, developing creativity is still viewed as something separate from academic learning. Students with undemonstrated creative potential often are excluded…

Art enriches, beautifies, and entertains, but more importantly it builds understanding, innovation, and mutual responsibility. Yet, so often with tight school budgets, the first programs to be down-sized or deleted are the art and music programs. But there is good news. Recently, the Boston public schools received a grant of $750,000 from the…

In some classrooms, gifted students are not exposed to the large and complex body of information and knowledge available today; instead, they are limited to what is deemed appropriate for the majority of their classmates. As a result, capable bright students may not develop the critical thinking skills necessary to analyze, synthesize, and…

Adam, an 11th grader, was identified as gifted and accepted into a two week summer enrichment program. He signed up for "Geometry with Flash Programming." He had no prior programming experience but had a strong and healthy self-image as mathematics student. Although Adam had a positive attitude toward mathematics and saw himself as a successful…

With the evolution of technology, students can now take online classes that may not be offered in their home schools. While online courses are commonly found in many high schools, WebQuests are used more commonly in elementary schools. Through the exploration of WebQuests, students are able to integrate the Internet into classroom activities. The…

Often, bright young people languish in a setting where repetition and rote learning lull them into passivity. When students are not challenged, they fail to understand that true achievement comes with effort. Because of bureaucratic pressure, limited funding, and large class sizes, teachers often find themselves "teaching to the middle" or…

In this article, the author talks about the responsibility of parents to help kids to become financially educated. The author contends that it is the parents' responsibility to insure that their children learn important financial skills. If it is not happening in school, it is time to add financial education to parenting priorities. For parents…

While not all gifted children love reading and writing and they do not all have access to books or grow up in literary families the great majority of these children crave the rich and imaginative world that literacy has to offer. Differences in culture, age, and geography influence this love of storytellers, poets, songwriters, and novelists, but…

There are two kinds of logical reasoning: "inductive" and "deductive". Inductive reasoning proceeds from effect back to cause, from special case to general principle. Detectives use it, examining the clues and conjecturing the actions that caused them. On the other hand, deductive reasoning proceeds from cause to effect, from principle to…

This article offers suggestions for using biographies of famous women aviators with gifted students. Aviators suggested include Ruth Law, Jacqueline Cochran, Bessie Coleman, Beryl Markham, and Amelia Earhart. Teaching suggestions include creative book sharing, integration with map work, and student projects based on these lives. (Contains…

This article offers suggestions for using the Internet to stimulate the interest of gifted students in various aspects of American government and the changing of administrations. Ten relevant Web sites are described. (DB)

This article discusses how creative thinking can be encouraged in students through such classic tools as brainstorming and the productive thinking elements of fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration. It describes how fairy tales can be used to foster these thinking skills and suggests classroom activities. (Contains two references.) (CR)

This article provides 20 principles to enable educators to identify meaningful creative activities for gifted students and avoid the superfluous "whistles". Activities should: value creative thinking, make children more sensitive to environmental stimuli, encourage manipulation of objects and ideas, develop tolerance for new ideas, and teach how…

This article provides a teaching guide to the effective use of biographies and autobiographies with gifted students. Fifteen learning activities are suggested such as conducting an eminent people news conference, creating a biography collage, writing a fictionalized biography, and completing a family tree. (Contains three references and a reading…