Taylor Blair 24 November 2013 Dr.

Patti Wood Speaker reflection Meeting the needs of gifted and advanced learners in the general education classroom. Differentiation = the key to meeting the needs of ALL learners, especially those gifted and advanced students who have move beyond proficiency. Carol Ann Tomlinson is an education specialist and has worked hard to make this philosophy known. There similarities and differences of students in the classroom. Similarities include: growth stages, developmental process, same age, and they are all capable of growing (growing mindset). Differences include: culture, interests, learning profile, socioeconomic, experiences, gender differences, prior knowledge, learning rate, cognitive ability, motivation. One size does not fit all. Gifted and advanced students need curriculum that: progresses at a faster pace, offers them choices based on personal interests, provides challenge to prevent boredom, engages them in meaningful learning tasks, not just more of the same. Best practices for differentiating instruction. Differentiation strategies can vary from being easy to do to drastically changing the curriculum to meet the students needs. Creating questions for high-lever thinking will challenge advanced students. Cubing is a strategy used to offers students assessment choices and adds novelty to thinking. This strategy is easily adaptable to all content areas. Teaching students to question themselves and ask better questions. In class we chose a picture book and developed higher-level thinking questions that challenge the students understanding of the story and help them apply what they have learned.

Then we created a tic tac toe board with different tasks for the students to accomplish that are in regards to the story. We learned that there must be text-based evidence for students answers, but it is also important for student to express their feelings and opinions. Our book was Space Travellers which was a story about a boy and his mother who are homeless. They sleep in a play rocket on the playground, and the mom tells the boy they are traveling to space to make it feel more comfortable. The key to creating these questions and tasks was sticking with the idea of homelessness rather than space. Homelessness is the key idea of the story and will promote higher-level thinking and provide the students more opportunities to make connections back to the story, where space would not provide the same opportunities. I really enjoyed listening to Dr. Wood about how to promote higher-level thinking to not only advanced students but also lower level learners as well. The activity we did had prepared me to teach a lesson on a specific book and how to incorporate specific strategies that will challenge students.