1. How to Differentiate Curriculum for your high ability students
Colleen Carey
Sage Teacher

2. Every child has the right to learn something new each day.

3. What you need to consider for each student…
Readiness
Interests
Learning profile

4. How do we accommodate for students who are high ability?
Pace
Delivery
Product
Depth

5. Change the Pace
If a student has mastered a concept, it does not need to be retaught or retested.
Gifted students will typically know the concepts being taught or will learn them quickly.
Their time would be better spent extending their knowledge through an extension or enrichment activity.

6. How do you change the pace?
Pretest first
Curriculum compacting
Multi-leveled activities/groups
Rotate 3 groups (10 minutes each)
High Ability, At Grade Level, At Risk
At risk students should meet with the teacher first.
Give the most difficult questions first
Independent study/research project

7. What might that look like?
Example of curriculum compacting
Pretest a student
Masters most of the objectives
Completes an independent investigation pertaining to same standards as the rest of the class.
When the class arrives at a concept that has not been mastered by the child, he/she participates in the mini lesson.
Hardest questions are given first. When he/she shows mastery, he/she can return to working on the independent investigation.

8. Change the Delivery
High ability students need instruction in the areas they have not mastered, but whole class modeling and repetition can cause a gifted/high ability child to become defiant or inattentive.

9. How can you change the delivery?
Mini lessons
Curriculum compacting
Independent investigation
Resource Preview
Open-ended questions
Incorporate these in your whole class discussions as well as during independent work
Bloom’s Taxonomy (Change the verbs in your objectives)
Example: Change list to rate/compare
Use the Bloom’s Taxonomy word wheels

10. What might this look like?
When learning about first responders, you can ask the academically advanced student to read three nonfiction texts at his/her independent reading level about firefighters, police officers, or EMTs. Then ask him/her to recommend one text to be read to the class, justifying the choice.
This resource preview requires the student to think critically while he/she still explores the same concept as the rest of the class.
Another Example: Create stories to use with class for math problems such as the missing addends. When is the second addend missing?

11. Change the Product
By changing the product, high ability students are allowed an opportunity to apply their knowledge of the content to their other talents and abilities.
Allow students to use their talents and abilities to create a final product.
Technology and the arts

12. How can you change the product?
Choice boards
Tic-Tac-Toes
Student choice ( See Multiple Intelligence List)
Technology-Movie making or videogame
Arts- Game/Drawing creation
Music- Song

13. How might this look?
A student is given a menu listing several product options to choose from.
The student picks one to demonstrate his/her knowledge of the concepts learned.

14. Add Depth Gifted students master facts of a new concept quickly.
Encourage students to delve a little deeper into concepts.
Have the students choose an area to focus on. Then have then become experts.

15. How might this look?
Use a multi-leveled lesson consisting of three different activities where all students are working on the same concept.
Focus on analyzing, evaluating, and creating for level 3.
Example for K-1:
Level 1- Students solve one step word problems with pictures (visual representation)
Level 2- Students solve one step word problems without pictures (algorithm only)
Level 3- Students create their own one step word problems for others to solve

16. How can you add depth? Multi-leveled activities
Open-ended/higher level thinking questions
Academic conversations
Increase the complexity
Decrease the structure (allow for exploration)

17. What do you need to be aware of when grouping students?
Heterogeneous grouping- Gifted students should be mixed in with other students during activities that incorporate higher order thinking since they can improve the quality of conversation.
Homogenous grouping- Gifted students should be grouped together when questions/tasks are quick facts/procedural activities as many gifted students become the teachers in these situations.

18. Grades K-2 Extension Ideas: Vowel Graphing
Have students randomly pick a page from their favorite book. You could base this on their favorite part of the book, be completely random, or assign them a page. Once that is done have them count the number of times the five vowels appear on that page and then graph those results.

19. Grades K-2 Extension Ideas: Tangram Shapes
Have the students fill in pattern blocks using different shapes. Then have them answer higher order thinking questions. (Example: How many different shapes fit into each tangram? What differences do you observe?)
*You can use this same activity with the older students by having them create fraction problems using the pattern blocks and the overlapping shapes. For example one hexagon (1 whole) would equal 6 triangles (6/6).

20. Grades 3-5 Extension Ideas: Going on a Trip
Give the students a set budget to plan a dream vacation, and then have them pick a destination, plan an itinerary, and keep a budget. For example, students can be given a budget of $5000 to plan a five-day vacation to the European destination of their choice. They have to map out the cost of travel (car rental, train, plane, etc.), hotels, and food for the week. You can add in requirements like mandating they visit one historical monument or museum a day.

21. Grades 3-5 Extension Ideas: Writing Prompts using Measurement, Fractions, and decimals
The students take part in a scientific experiment and are shrunk down to the size of an ant. Have them describe the world around them using measurement vocabulary.
Have the students write a letter to the President telling him why the U.S. should or should not change to the Metric system.
Have the students describe their dream house using Metric units.
Have the students debate the following prompt: Most of the world no longer uses fractions. Should the US continue using fractions or adopt using only decimals and percentages?

22. Online Resources for k-1
GregTangMath.com
Leveled teaching games
Great for all levels
Noetic Learning for the Gifted
Math Worksheet Creator/Problem of the Week
Math-Salamanders.com
Pre-made worksheets/puzzles
Check my website (Miss Carey’s Sage Page) for more resources

23. Online Resources for 2-5 GregTangMath.com Leveled teaching games
Great for all levels
Noetic Learning for the Gifted
Math Worksheet Creator/Problem of the Week
Math-Salamanders.com
Pre-made worksheets/puzzles
Figure This Challenges
TenMarks.com
Illustrativemathematics.org
Check my website (Miss Carey’s Sage Page) for more online resources

24. By “differentiating” instruction PLEASE DON’T…
Make the student an extra teacher.
Give them more work or an extra paper.
Allow the students to move on after they completed the first worksheet that everyone else in the class is completing.
Base whether a student is gifted/bright or not on whether they are doing well on every test or not.
Some students come across as oppositional defiant but just need to be challenged.