Is a gifted education program best for your child?
One of the chief complaints of very bright students when they are going through school is boredom. When students with exceptional abilities are consistently presented with work that they are not challenged by, they can become restless and depressed – and may even present classroom behavior problems!
Enrollment in a district’s gifted education program can alleviate this boredom for many of the students that qualify for the program. In a gifted education program, they would be presented with challenging tasks that will help them to grow and learn, will broaden their horizons, and stretch their mental boundaries.
Many parents wonder what the difference is between enrolling their child in a gifted education program and simply placing the students in more advanced classes or allowing them to skip a grade. The truth is, the differences are immense!
When a student skips a grade, they are merely being placed in classes that are aimed at students of average academic ability – the only difference being that the students are older than they are and the work is slightly more advanced and content. When a student is enrolled in a program for gifted and talented education, the entire program is set up to challenge gifted minds. Most programs employ some form of project-based learning, and the entire curriculum is based around higher-level thinking and challenging students to fire their passionate about learning.
Another difference is that, while giving students more advanced work indeed challenges them by presenting them with more difficult content, in many cases students are merely being asked to memorize and regurgitate more complex material. While the content is more advanced, the thinking skills involved are still lower level. In gifted education programs, higher-level thinking and creativity in problem solving is cultivated and encourage.
In closing, if the student is struggling in their mainstream classes because of boredom with the presented material, putting them into a program specifically designed for gifted students can absolutely be a godsend for their educational future.
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