Developing Teachers’ Skill to Identify High Ability Students

Abstract

The question: “how to educate teachers in order to help them be more understanding, more suitable, and more motivated when teaching gifted students” has been widely discussed. The question whether it is possible at all certainly needs more research. However, we shall hereby suggest some “signs”, hints, or even explicit utterances that might help teachers to notice students who need extra-supervision, enrichment activities or an accelerated track. These sayings, or doings, are usually either ignored by teachers or quite often wrongly interpreted. Had teacher known how to “read” these signs it would have helped them to know if a certain student needs extra-challenging, different, higher-level school curriculum, more creative homework or self-learning assignments. Here are the 5 main points a teacher should consider when having to decide whether their student is gifted or talented. 1. Boredom: looking bored or complaining about being bored 2. Finishing all tasks before everybody else 3. Correcting the teacher or/and other students/”Takes over” class conversation 4. Does not do homework or prepares for exams but gets high grades; 5. Shows emotional high level