School Programs for Gifted Children

Goes your child's school have a Gifted or Extending program for their pupils? And what does it mean?

A gifted child is not the same as a gifted learning. Children may be gifted in various ways: gifted in fast learning, gifted in music, gifted in people skills, gifted in making friends with animals, gifted in athletics. While most education institutions understand this and cater for students with after-school activites such as drama circles, music classes and sports, their "gifted" program dusing school hours is reserved for children who are gifted in fast learning. This makes sense, because the idea is that the child has already mastered what's required by the curriculum and is now sitting in class, bored.

Your child's learning style will tell you whether your child is a gifted learner. Find out.

Naturally, children who are ahead with the curriculum should not be given additional work to do in their own time, instead, they should be given different work do to during class, without increasing either the workload or the time they have to devote to learning. We wouldn't want children to feel that if they do their work quickly and correctly, they are simply given another worksheet to complete.



"Extension learning" in class or outside the class should naturally stretch beyond giving Year 6 work to those Year 5 pupils who are ahead. This only compounds the boredom problem when they get to Year 6. Extension and stimulation is all about branch-out learning, i.e. introducing students to things that are not in the curriculum, like studying the subject in extra depth or doing logical puzzles or writing scripts for movies.

Remember, gifted children can also fall into the category of kinesthetic or tactile learners. Children who learn differently usually underachieve, no matter how bright they are. What is your child's learning style?