Young, Gifted and Bored E-Book

David George

• Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Many gifted and talented children are bored and frustrated in the classroom. Many are not achieving their potential and talents are going unrecognised. Written by an experienced and world renowned author with a wealth of experience, this practical guide will challenge, excite and inspire teachers and show them how they can identify and provide for the needs of these children.

Leseprobe

Praise for Young, Gifted and Bored

This brings together much of the material that David has collected over his long career in gifted education. The anecdotes, examples of children’s work and humourous touches that make his presentations so popular, are all here. His warm and patriarchal voice comes through strongly and as the reader, you know that this author is someone who cares very much about G&T children getting a fair deal. To be gifted and bored is indeed, a travesty.

The components one would expect of any useful book about teaching able children are all here: identifying gifts and talents and looking out for underachievers; making good provision; paying attention to self-esteem; nurturing gifts and talents in the early years; and ‘a few words on parenting’. All is presented in a very concise and accessible format; and easy to dip into.

G&T coordinators and leading teachers will find much to support their work in school, especially in terms of providing CPD for colleagues. The examples of ‘celebrity’ individuals who were late developers: ‘Albert Einstein was four years old before he could speak and seven before he could read …’; and those castigated by their teachers as ‘indolent and illiterate’ (Roald Dahl) can bring an extra (enjoyable) dimension to any training you are planning, helping to get colleagues ‘on side’. More than this, there are practical resources that will help teachers in their identification of, and provision for, able learners.

Higher order thinking skills, problem solving and creativity are at the heart of good G&T provision, and teachers are exhorted to plan for their inclusion in all lessons. ‘Eight great strategies’, sections on practical approaches to differentiation and a consideration of questioning skills are all designed to help them in that quest.

Dr Linda Evans, Editor of G&T Update

In the world of education, David George is one of a handful of people who truly understands what it means to be gifted and talented. Much has been written and even more spoken about the subject. Yet, our inability to identify gifted children and what to do with them once we have done so is startling.

At last, a book which champions young people of exceptional creativity and talent, who possess the ability to answer old questions and tackle old problems in new ways. That is precisely what David George achieves in his new book. It is long overdue.

Sir John Jones, Writer, Presenter and Educational Consultant

I found this short book revelatory. It sets out very clearly how a large number of children have potential for higher achievement and creativity, but often react with inattention and even antisocial behaviour in contemporary school environments. I suddenly understood why my son gets average marks in class, but occasionally top marks in exams! In well written chapters it sets out how to identify these gifted and talented children, and how to understand, teach, support and parent them. This is referenced to current government educational policy and school practice. I believe schools that enthusiastically pursue a special policy for these children, and work creatively with them, will see spectacular and rewarding results. In this way we can equip a generation with the capabilities needed in the twenty-first century.

Professor Philip Sugarman, Chief Executive, St Andrew’s Healthcare

Dr David George has written another excellent book which stands out from similar books on the market. The emphasis is on the crucial early years, the importance of parenting and raising self-esteem. The book is very readable with many practical ideas, charts and tables for busy teachers.

As usual David’s book is written with humour and great humanity. He is passionate about education and has a genuine love of children.

Now that ‘gifted education’ has been cut by the government we must not let the issue be sidelined. This supportive book helps the reader to focus on this issue. The future of each child, and the country, is at stake.

Richard Y. McNulty, Retired Primary School Head Teacher and Inspector

The ability to think is without doubt the most important skill for schools of te twenty-first century to develop and nurture in our pupils. Who knows what the world will expect and require of our current pupils when they complete their compulsory education. What is certain is that they will need to be able to think for themselves and to think creatively. This is David George‘s philosophy and spur for this book; another, which will be welcomed by teachers, parents and carers alike. David George, as always, writes with conviction and offers both theory and practice.

Honing the skills of thinking does not just happen, not even amongst the most gifted and talented children in our schools, who, if not challenged will become bored and often challenging. George argues cogently that best practice and provision for the gifted and talented enhances the education of all children, and that it is the responsibility of schools to have identification strategies. He makes it clear that there is no quick fix for best provision for the young, gifted and bored, but offers a variety of multidimensional approaches to identification and many ideas for enriching, extending and differentiating the curriculum for pupils of all ages. The latter point is worth emphasising as teachers, and indeed parents and carers, of children of all ages will find this a must read if they are committed to nurturing their charge’s thinking abilities and win back the hearts, minds and brains of able, but underachieving, pupils.

In essence, a readable book, written with clarity and deploying evidence that demonstrates George’s real enthusiasm for developing pupils’ thinking and that his insights and understanding of pupils remain firmly rooted in his regular engagement with pupils in schools across the country.

Elizabeth Garner, Head, Forest Preparatory School

Young, Gifted and Bored by David George is a practical insight into the mind of the gifted and talented child or young person. It gives both teaching staff and parents alike practical tools to help identify, assess and nurture the young minds of those with high learning potential. The book’s emphasis is on the importance of parents and teachers working together to ensure that the young and gifted are definitely not bored but are effectively challenged in the classroom and beyond. It is an easy read for anyone working with children and young people, particularly those who are looking to explore other reasons for underachievement.

Denise Yates, Chief Executive, The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC)

Anyone who has experienced David George’s training courses has come to expect an inspirational tour de force in working with the most able: his new book Young Gifted and Bored does no less in print. It is a world away from dry pedagogical theory and deeply embedded in sparkling realism which every teacher will relate to and can learn from. He manages to combine instruction with entertainment and amusement. No teacher will read this book and not feel enlivened and emboldened in their teaching: Dr George ought to be available on prescription. A lifetime of real chalkface experience and expert knowledge of our most amazing young people, and how to respond to their needs, are woven into this remarkable and highly readable book.

Matthew Judd, Second Master, Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School, former Principal, Mander Portman Woodward College

David creates a clear and readable context for the education of gifted and talented young people. We are educating our children for an unknown and uncertain future and David’s short book allows us to explore and extend a range of approaches that will stretch those most able children and improve the provision for all. David’s warm and open approach underpins much of this work and is blended with a sharp focus of how teacher’s can change their classroom practice. Parents, decision makers and teachers will find practical strategies and instruments to review their provision and ensure their children remain fully engaged!

Chris Grimshaw, International Consultant

Foreword

How many times have you heard people tell children – or heard it from your own mouth – that they should never ‘blow their own trumpet’? Or become ‘too big for their boots’? Or let that success ‘go to their head’? How often have we watched people rise to the top of their field exploiting whatever gift or talent they have, only to relish their sudden demise and fall from public grace? Apart from the sports pages, why else would the Sunday papers exist?

Maybe it’s a peculiarly British trait, this notion of not really wanting people to be better than we are and, when they are, to resent them for it. Perhaps it’s related to a class thing, where we have been taught to ‘know our station’ in life, to know exactly where we stand in the John Cleese, Ronnie Barker, Ronnie Corbett line-up (and if you don’t recognise that reference have a look here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0DUsGSMwZY and then use the clip as a teaching resource for your next PSHE lesson).

Or perhaps it originated in the 1960s and the push for a comprehensive system of education where the ‘grammar school/secondary modern’; ‘brains/ good with your hands’ divide no longer reigned and we decided that all children were equal and all deserved the same opportunities, something that somehow came to mean that all children are the same and all deserve the same. Maybe this is why the notion of gifted and talented children has caused such resentment and consternation in so many members of the teaching profession for whom the idea of some children being ‘better’ than others seems to fit so uncomfortably with their egalitarian ideals.

Yet, as any of you who grew up with an elder brother will know, ‘equal’ and ‘fair’ aren’t the same things at all.

Everyone has an equal right to be educated and by educated I mean educated in the truest sense. To have the very best of what each child brings to school brought out and developed as far as is possible as part of that child’s journey to adulthood. Whatever ‘subject’ we teach we are a teacher of children and it is our moral, ethical and professional responsibility to act on that daily in helping all children start to become all they can be. Yet education is not the same as being ‘schooled’, a process by which children are trained to pass tests that are important in so much they measure a country’s ability to get children to pass these tests, regardless of their ability to be creative or brave or honourable or to be able to think deeply or even think for themselves.

Which brings us to talent and also to motivation Equality of rights does not mean equality of ability. Equality of rights does not mean I have to use those rights. Everybody can join the school football team but not everyone does. Everybody can enter the school library (or ‘learning resource centre’ as they are now known, although with the current changes in the direction of UK education they will probably soon be called ‘libraries’ again, with books in Latin) but some children wouldn’t be seen dead in there, unless they were hiding. Not everyone wants to be part of the school musical, despite the best efforts of Glee and anyway, a bit like public speaking and being on TV, just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should.

Which brings us to dopamine. If you are looking for ways to engage learners and fire them up to learn effectively, enthusiastically and enjoyably then this neurochemical really is ‘teacher’s little helper’. Dopamine is a naturally occurring neurotransmitter that is linked to memory, to learning and to attention. What is the secret to firing the learning brain with the right amount of dopamine to make learning almost effortless? Reward and the anticipation of reward. In other words, doing something that you get a kick out of doing and also knowing you are about to do something that you get a kick out of doing.

Which brings us, finally, to the title of this book, ‘Young, Gifted and Bored’, a name that springs from Dr David George’s pioneering work in education for many years and from his recent focus on what are known as ‘gifted underachievers’. These are the young people in our classrooms who have so much to offer, who fit the best current definition of ‘gifted and talented’ but whose energies are not tapped by current teaching practice, whose time is spent avoiding using those talents or using them – and getting their dopamine fix – to create disruption and mayhem in the classroom. What David is suggesting is that if we seek to understand their natures and their needs better, if we adapt the way we work with these young people in our schools and homes, if we seek to let them exploit their strengths, if we challenge them to be better than they are, even if that means being better than the young person sitting next to them or, heaven forefend, better than we are, then maybe we can rescue them from their own boredom and frustration with a school system that is failing them not because it is too hard but because it is too easy.

There is phrase which David uses that can be traced back to John F. Kennedy, if not further, and that is relevant for all teachers who perhaps struggle with the very concept of gifted and talented children. It is that ‘a rising tide lifts all ships’. In other words, take up David’s challenge and stretch yourself to stretch the young, gifted and bored in your care. In doing so, all your learners will benefit and learn to discover the pleasure of successfully blowing whatever trumpet they have.

Ian Gilbert, January 2011

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my warmest thanks to numerous friends and colleagues who have supported me during the writing of this book: Ian Gilbert of Independent Thinking, who invited me to write the book in the first place, for his inspiration and for writing the Foreword; Tim Dracup from the Department for Children, Schools and Families and Ian Warwick from London Gifted and Talented for their encouragement and helpful discussions; Corinne Maskell for her patience in typing the script so ably; Crown House Publishing for their thorough editing and generous support; and to my lovely wife and family who are always there for me.

Thank you to the numerous teachers, parents and children who have contributed in many ways through discussions and anecdotes, and for permission to use their ideas and materials. I continue to learn from them.

Lastly, my apologies to those who I may have inadvertently left out or not acknowledged in the text.

Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Gifted Underachievers

2. Identification Strategies

3. Provision

4. Self-Esteem and the Gifted Underachiever

5. Very Young, Already Gifted and Potentially Bored

6. A Few Words on Parenting the Young, Gifted and Bored

Resources

Bibliography

Index

Copyright

Introduction

Introduction

The principal aim of education in schools should be to create young people who are capable of being creative thinkers – who can do things to make the world a better place, not merely repeating what others have done before them.

Meeting the needs of gifted and talented children has become a topic of widespread debate. A great deal of time, energy and money has been spent on children with other special needs whereas the requirements of children of high ability have been relatively neglected. However, during the last ten years the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF – but now the Department for Education) have begun to put substantial sums of money into gifted and talented education. Alongside the more vigorous and frequent monitoring of schools that has come about through Ofsted inspections, the focus in this area has sharpened at last.

I maintain that many, though not all, gifted and talented children have special needs and problems, not the least of which is that they are so often bored by the education system in which they find themselves: lessons which don’t stretch them, teachers who don’t understand them, peers who hold them back. Frustrated, they often simply switch off or, worse, start to make trouble as a way of adding some spice to their day. Yet they also have exceptional, sometimes immense, talents to offer. We owe it to them and to society to cultivate their abilities to help prepare tomorrow’s leaders and talent. These children are a precious natural resource and one that we must not squander. Indeed, the survival of the human species owes much to one characteristic – a capacity for creative problem solving. This ability to find new answers to difficulties remains a vital one. A major objective of education for these children is to recognize and foster their unique abilities. Unfortunately, the pursuit of this and related objectives is often plagued with confusion, misconceptions, doubtful assumptions, exaggerated claims and a lack of communication.

I undertake numerous courses for gifted and talented children and often have frank discussions with these outstanding students. A recurrent theme is that many of them (40 per cent) are bored and others say they already know what is being taught (30 per cent). I argue strongly that repetition, regurgitation and revision for these children does them a great disservice and leads to them becoming bored and turned off from school. And all the time the clock is ticking as they while away their days without being stretched or sometimes even noticed.

It is the right of all children to go as far and as fast as they can along every dimension of the school curriculum without any brakes being put on them. Therefore, every child is entitled to the best programme, the most attentive care and the greatest love and respect.

Guy Claxton (2008) states that most people would agree that the only thing we can say with any confidence about the year 2025 is there is not much we can say about it with any confidence. Of course we want to give young people the knowledge and attitudes we value. The trouble is most societies are now a jumble of different sorts of ‘we’, each casting their shadow in a different direction. The only sensible role for education is to get young people ready to cope well with complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity. It is estimated that children in primary school today will possibly live to the age of 100 and have at least six jobs during their career. With such a future in mind we need to turn out flexible generalists because the world is changing so fast.

And it is the very process by which we can do this that will make school a whole lot more engaging for gifted yet bored students. But who are they? According to official DCSF guidelines (see Dracup, 2009) they are children and young people with one or more abilities developed to a level significantly ahead of a year group, or with a potential to develop those abilities. They estimate that this amounts to: 820,000 individuals in schools, an estimated 140,000 in post-16 settings and a target to identify one million gifted and talented students for the year 2010.

This means:

A national gifted and talented population aged 4 to 19.

A gifted and talented population in all primary and secondary schools and colleges.

Top 5 per cent nationally aged 11 to 19 determined using published criteria (otherwise schools identify these children themselves).

A marker, not necessarily permanent, that the learner needs extra support – if we are to challenge them and help them to re-engage.

If the DCSF/DoE is ready to admit that there is such a thing as a ‘gifted and talented’ student, schools are sometimes less so. However, here is my own personal eight-point rationale as to why schools must address this issue. Feel free to use it with any of your colleagues who bemoan the behaviour of that clever yet disaffected child, but who refuses to acknowledge that the problem can be addressed through a whole-school focus on the gifted and talented.

It is every child’s right to go as far and as fast along every dimension of the school curriculum – ‘excellence for all’ as most schools like to say in their prospectus. We must support schools in meeting the needs of all their learners, something that falls very much under the ‘personalization’ banner.Some children have special needs – supporting disadvantaged learners means narrowing the achievement gap.There is evidence from HM Inspectorate of Education and Ofsted that if a school has a gifted and talented coordinator and work is done to identify and work with gifted and talented children then all children benefit. This is a key driver for whole-school improvement. ‘A rising tide raises all ships’ as they say. The world needs these children – they are the brains of the future and have immense talent to give to society.Aptitude is equally distributed across all social classes but opportunities are not. We must identify and nurture all talents in our schools in order to narrow achievement gaps.Education should be a gateway to a more equal society.There is a suggestion (largely anecdotal) that if we do not provide for these children then some engage in antisocial behaviour beyond school.There is evidence that some children underachieve. Some coast deliberately; these are the young, gifted and bored.

In addition to this rationale, other benefits include: improvements in learner achievement/performance; more effective teaching, learning and whole-school support; less underachievement by disadvantaged learners; more and better external learning opportunities; better schools; improved support for parents and educators; and enhanced social mobility and national competitiveness.

From April 2011, however, there will be no more national strategies. Instead, the Department of Education will establish frameworks for quality assured providers and the opportunity for leading schools to support their peers.

What does all this mean? It is now, more than ever, down to individual schools and individual teachers – down to you – to drive the movement forward, to work out priorities and come up with your own high quality approaches to bring the best out of your gifted and talented learners.

Childhood isn’t what it used to be: it will never be the same again

Children are able to learn more outside the classroom as they are only in school for 17 per cent of their working life over a year.

The greatest influence on our children are parents, peer group and the environment. This is why they learn so much outside school; that is, education does not stop at the school gates. The diagram below gives evidence for this and more. This is why I suggest to teachers that a school day never ends with a full stop, always a question mark. Therefore they have time for homework!