Teaching the Gifted

There has been a lot of controversy on the news lately pertaining to how a given school system should handle situations within the classroom where students are unable to keep up academically with their fellow classmates.  In an elementary school system, it is a question of whether to keep the kids in the classroom if they do not understand what is going on, or whether they should be placed in a different classroom.  But what about the kids who are at a much higher academic level than their peers?  They are in a similar situation, as the classroom is not moving at the proper speed for those children either.  They will find themselves growing bored as will find that they are not challenged enough.  What should a teacher do in this type of situation?

Within the website for the United Federation of Teachers, the article mentions that most schools do not have enough funding to give students the options of taking accelerated classes within an elementary school.  Of course once students get to high school, honors and AP courses are offered at most schools, but this is not usually an option in an elementary school setting, so it is extremely important that the teacher is aware that students are at different academic levels, and to make sure that each student is sufficiently challenged while still understanding the material.  Often times, teachers may try too hard to teach lessons as a whole group, but this is difficult when students learn at such different paces.  Perhaps it would help after a lesson was given to split the students up into smaller groups of kids with the same learning type as each other, so that the teacher can move from group to group and help students at a more individual level at the proper pace.  This way the students who are gifted can move at a faster pace, and those who have learning difficulties can learn at a slower pace.  We did this for reading groups in my elementary school and the system seemed to work very well, as each group read books that were at the perfect reading level for them.  It is also important to remember that students can learn from one another as well as the teacher, so it may also help to switch the groups occasionally so students can work with different people and share their opinions and findings.  It is certainly not easy to teach a classroom full of kids who are at different academic levels, but there are definitely strategies a teacher can use to make sure that each child is learning at the rate that is right for them.