Twice-exceptional students can shine in the STEM fields because Science, Technology, Engineering and Math use higher levels of thinking skills like application, synthesis, creativity and evaluation. In this article, the author discusses what parents and teachers can do to open the STEM doors for twice-exceptional learners.

Parents and teachers occasionally express concern that their children are too focused on the discovery of mathematics. The author remembers clearly one upset father who told him, "Just teach my daughter what she needs to know. Don't worry if she understands why it works. She just needs to know how to get the right answer." The author agrees with…

Creative and critical thinking have been identified by Isaksen, Dorval, and Treffinger (2000) as the ability to "perceive gaps, challenges, or concerns; think of many varied or unusual possibilities; or elaborate and extend alternatives," as well as make meaningful connections that include analyzing, evaluating, and developing options. Business…

Gifted students use their advanced language abilities and communication skills to participate in intellectual banter. How might educators encourage them to have more thought provoking discussions? Since gifted kids generally learn rapidly, retain information easily, see unusual relationships, and have strong needs to know, they should be provided…

Statistics is a branch of mathematics that involves organization, presentation, and interpretation of data, both quantitative and qualitative. Data do not lie, but people do. On the surface, quantitative data are basically inanimate objects, nothing more than lifeless and meaningless symbols that appear on a page, calculator, computer, or in one's…

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…

"Fast Track" is a pseudonym for an accelerated, advanced language arts program for verbally gifted and high potential students in grades 6-8. The critical thinking model used for "Fast Track" was gleaned from Coalition of Essential Schools founder Ted Sizer's Habits of Mind: significance, evidence, connections, perspective, and supposition, as…

Teachers know their students must struggle and grapple with authentic tasks in order to grow stronger. Classroom teachers of the gifted know that their students cannot advance cognitively without facing relevant and challenging material that demands higher level thinking and reasoning. Therefore, the teacher of gifted mathematics students must…

Challenging problems can make mathematics more attractive to all learners, including the gifted. Application problems that one still finds in regular textbooks often can be resolved by applying a single mathematical concept, operation, or formula. These problems do not require a higher order of thinking. They are, therefore, less cognitively and…

The Other 3Rs Project began with an investigation into the most important psychological components of academic success. The research pointed to reasoning, resilience, and responsibility. The objective of the project was to integrate these components into a useful problem solving model that could, with practice and guidance, be applied both inside…

Parenting a gifted child may not be what Mom and Dad expected when they read parenting books and first saw that innocent infant face. A gifted child is a joy and a challenge--rarely predictable, sometimes frustrating and annoying, but never boring. This article discusses the characteristics and vulnerabilities of the gifted. The author offers some…

In their new book, "Genius Denied" (2004), Jan and Bob Davidson paint a bleak picture of the educational scene for gifted and talented children in the United States. They also do a thorough job of presenting and describing the many school programs and services available and the good research bases for those programs and services. What they fail to…

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…

Data was released from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in the 1980s that showed a decrease in students' problem-solving abilities and conceptual understanding but an increase in performance on items requiring lower-ordered thinking skills. To address this decline in performance, leading disciplinary organizations, such as…

It is perhaps one of the best-kept secrets in educating gifted high school youth, and yet for 45 years, Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership (HOBY) has been going strong, "Motivating Tomorrow's Leaders Today." After spending nine inspirational days in 1958 with Albert Schweitzer (Nobel Prize physician and philosopher) at his clinic in the African jungle,…