Effective Teacher

In 2015, I wrote about my personal philosophy of the gifted learner. I stated in my paper that, “Giftedness is not a one, set definition. The definition of gifted must encompass intellect, ability, creative talent as well as emotional awareness. It cannot be micro-managed and be a “one size fits all” definition” (Dauber, 2015). People, who are gifted, need differentiation and opportunity to express, demonstrate and show their giftedness. Educators must be able to provide opportunities for the gifted learner to express his/her abilities and/or talents. Gifted students learn differently and require special educational experiences in order to grow academically and achieve their highest potential. Therefore, the education field must be able to understand not only the cognitive side of a gifted learner but the affective or social/emotional aspects too.

Bloom’s taxonomy of learning 8 Bloom’s theory links

As I have grown as a professional particularly over the past four years working with gifted learners, I recognize many lessons learned to improve my practice. My approach is less teacher directed and more student led blocks. I start with a brief mini-lesson for the topic of the day giving a few tips (as you can see in my whole group video clip). There is a short session of guided practice during this acquiring knowledge portion of the lesson. The bulk of the time then is given to investigations where I facilitate meaning making. Providing challenging tasks that I do not solve for or with them has given new excitement to my classroom. The level of engagement has skyrocketed. Conversations among students has given opportunity to build deep understanding on pre-algebra content. I have no students in academic support and none have failed their end-of-the year testing which is amazing given the complexity of our curriculum. Across the state, the 8th grade math assessment is one of the lowest performing end of the year tests. I am confident my experiences in the reflective cohort, balanced assessment committee, and gifted course work/Praxis time investments leading to endorsements had an impact on student learning.

Bloom’s Taxonomy is a classification of learning objectives in education that was developed by a committee of educators in the late 1940s to early 1950s. It shows us that lower level knowledge must be mastered

One of the difficulties in identifying the needs of low-income students is the profound cultural barriers which exist that prevent their strengths and deficits from being identified. Children from low-income homes frequently have poorer vocabularies and a weaker basis of the type of knowledge that is frequently considered 'intelligence' on most forms of assessment. A low-income child's IQ may be high, even though he lacks a framework of accepted middle-class knowledge. "In January 2003, the National Academy of Sciences released a report on the seeming overrepresentation of minorities in special education and underrepresentation of those students in gifted education. The NRC reported that, nationwide, 7.47 percent of all white students and 9.9 percent of Asian students are placed in gifted programs. Meanwhile, 3.04 percent of African-American students, 3.57 percent of Hispanic students, and 4.86 percent of American Indian students are classified as gifted" (GT-minority identification, 2003, ERIC Clearinghouse). The discrepancy, the NAS believed, could not be solely explained by talent alone but was at least partially rooted in the methods of identifying students labeled as gifted. Biases in standardized and other tests identifying student strengths, combined with prejudices, however unintentional, amongst educators and administrators lead to under-identification of the gifted

(2013). Curriculum Issues. Gifted child Today. Retrieved from Education Full Text (H.W. Wilson), Ipswich, MA. Accessed July 29, 2015.

Write one developmentally appropriate learning objective for the goal related to each level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

2 & 3. Use the most current versions of standardized tests that are going to be used to make a decision about admission into a gifted program and that norms are up-to-date and a good representation of

Therefore, it would be unproductive to attempt to persuade the audience, because they do not have the influence or power to bring about change. It would be in the speaker’s best interest to simply inform the audience about his or her topic. A more specific purpose would be to inform the audience of the benefits of special education for gifted students, such as the benefits of supplemental curriculum for the students, specialized educators working closely with the students, and long term influences of the classes on the

[Students who are gifted] give evidence of high achievement capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic or leadership capacity, or in specific academic field, and who need services or activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop those capabilities. ( No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 [NCLB], 2002, p. 526)

Motivating gifted students can present a challenge for any teacher. Many children are coming to school with very little enthusiasm to learn, especially the gifted child. Although

Adams County public school system’s current program doesn’t seem to recognize any minority or poor students who could be considered gifted. Educators in this district and committee members seem to lack any motivation to include diverse learners in their program. The fact that Adams County only recognized three out of four hundred thirty-eight over a five-year span is appalling. I feel Adams County need some major changes to extend their idea of giftedness. It needs to start with intensive and in-depth teacher training along with community outreach and awareness programs to help educate parents about giftedness. For instance, parent could learn ways to better support their children and help identify their child’s areas of giftedness.

Because of school-wide issue such as, funding, space, and staff availability, this may be the maximum amount of time that they can physically provide for pullout enrichment for gifted students. This is common, and in these cases, it is important to “ensure that the curricular and instructional experiences within the general education classroom are appropriate for the advanced needs of gifted students” (Brighton and Wiley, 2013, p.192). We know from the Lackland description, that their students are not receiving these educational opportunities in their general education classrooms because many of the students are displaying a lack of

Ford, D. (1998). The underrepresentation of minority students in gifted education: Problems and promises in recruitment and retention. The Journal of Special Education, 22, 4-14.

“What any person in the world can learn almost all persons can learn if provided with appropriate prior and current conditions of learning” (Bloom, 2017). This belief was held by Dr. Bloom in 1956 when he and his team created Bloom’s Taxonomy. Since then educators have been utilizing these “goals of the learning process” (Clark, 2015) and making assumptions of its usage and implications. I too did have assumptions but have not thought about how I developed them or how they would affect my use of the taxonomy. When starting this reflection I held three assumptions true about Bloom’s Taxonomy. The first is if the educator uses Bloom’s Taxonomy for planning through assessment, then the student will develop higher order thinking skills. Secondly, a student can move on to a higher order thinking level only if they first mastered a lower order thinking level. Thirdly, if educations use different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy in lessons students will retain more information. Interestingly, I uncovered two additional assumptions that I did not know I had. The first of which is that the focus on cognitive development of Bloom’s devalues importance of other domains. The other is that Bloom’s Taxonomy is used only by educators in K-12 and college. Here are some things I understand about this subject that informed or changed