Curriculum Compacting

A Guide to Differentiating Curriculum and Instruction Through Enrichment and Acceleration

Sally M. Reis, Joseph S. Renzulli, Deborah E. Burns

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032144139
• eBook ISBN: 9781000490541
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Curriculum compacting is one of the most well-researched and commonly used ways of differentiating instruction to challenge advanced learners. This practical and inexpensive method of differentiating both content and instruction enables classroom teachers to streamline the regular curriculum, ensure students' mastery of basic skills, and provide time for stimulating enrichment and acceleration activities. With information on the history and rationale of curriculum compacting as well as successful implementation strategies and multiple case studies, the second edition of Curriculum Compacting introduces the strategies that teachers need to understand to implement this differentiation strategy for high-potential, highly motivated, and academically talented and gifted students.

2017 NAGC Book of the Year Award Winner

1 An Overview of Curriculum Compacting

DOI: 10.4324/9781003234036-2

How does compacting help gifted and advanced learners? Ask any academically talented or bright student about his or her school day or experiences and you will often hear the same adjectives: boring, dull, uninteresting, repetitive, and even mind-numbing. What is curriculum compacting? Compacting is a research-based procedure (Reis, Westberg, Kulikowich, & Purcell, 1998) that streamlines and eliminates previously mastered regular curriculum for students who are capable of completing content at a faster pace. It saves time by eliminating content that students have already mastered that can be used to provide alternative learning activities that address enrichment or acceleration.

Many of us remember Mark Twain’s humorous commentary: “My education was only interrupted by the twelve years I spent in school.” On a more contemporary note, Woody Allen provides a similar epilogue to his years of public education. “My teachers loathed me. I never did homework. I’m amazed they expected me to work on those sleazy projects. To this day I wake up in the morning, clutch on to the bed and thank God I don’t have to go to school.”

On a more personal note, we all have daughters who are advanced readers in school. When one of our daughters, a very advanced reader, ran away from school as a second grader, we found her trudging down a busy road on her escape route. She begged us to let her stay home to be able to do some work that was interesting, challenging, and just a little bit fun.

Some smart kids will, on occasion, encounter a wonderful teacher who inspires and sparks their interests, making learning enjoyable and interesting while these students are fortunate enough to be in this special classroom. The years spent with inspiring teachers are magical for all kids, and the best teachers continually challenge academically talented students to stretch themselves to higher levels. But, let’s face it—all students, and in particular, our talented students, deserve to have challenging, enjoyable learning experiences throughout their education.

There is little doubt that what smart and high-potential kids tell us about school is not just an anomaly, whether it comes from the students themselves or is stated in research about dropouts or high-achieving students from low-income families (Bridgeland, DiIulio, Morison, 2006; Wyner, Bridgeland, & DiIulio, 2007). The majority of students, whether they are in school or have dropped out, say that school is just too easy, and that they would work harder if more was expected from them. In a national poll conducted by a nonprofit education group (Wolniak, Neishi, Rude, & Gebhardt, 2012), 88% of respondents indicated that school was too easy. Only 31% of respondents said that expectations at their schools were high or that they were being significantly challenged. In the same poll, 92% of students said they wanted a curriculum with more real-world experiences.

Gifted and Advanced Students' Learning Characteristics

Students identified as gifted or as advanced academic learners share some common characteristics. For example, students in this group often demonstrate strong cognitive skills or superior academic achievement. However, when it comes to characteristics such as learning styles, interests, prior educational experiences, specific academic and artistic strengths, and personal mindsets, this is a very heterogeneous group, with individuals who vary greatly. Knowledge of both the general descriptors that identify a student as a gifted learner, and the specific characteristics that define the child as an individual, are essential when making appropriate compacting decisions and plans. Of course, both sets of learner attributes also vary for the same child, depending on their grade or age when compacting is being implemented.

Table 1 contains the learner characteristics that can be used to describe each student’s individual profile. It is in the best interests of both educators and students to take these descriptors into consideration during the multiple phases of the compacting process.

What defines and characterizes appropriate instruction for advanced learners varies widely, but it is always aligned to the strengths, needs, experiences, characteristics, and interests of each student.

Students come to school from different types of families and economic situations. Some children are fortunate to have enjoyed a broad array of preschool leaning and enrichment experiences, and others live in homes where no one has

TABLE 1 Learning Differences in Students

Cognitive aptitude

Current achievement within core academic areas

Schooling and educational history

Family and community culture

First language

Mindset (beliefs about the role of effort in relation to learning and achievement)

Learning styles (visual, auditory, tactile, concrete)

Interests

Talent development experiences and expertise

Product preferences

Self-regulation strategies and study skills

the time, resources, or skill set to read, play, converse, create, or explore with them on a regular basis. Children with these personal struggles are just as much in need of talent development opportunities and enriching and challenging school experiences as those fortunate enough to live in families who can provide these opportunities in a home setting.

A theme that has inspired our work for more than four decades is, “Schools should be places for talent and strength development.” Enriching, challenging curriculum and instruction for high-potential and academically talented learners should engage and develop the talents of these students through rich and interesting learning experiences, characterized by exposure to the key concepts and principles of a discipline.

Joe’s work on the Multiple Menu Model and our work on the Enrichment Triad and the SEM are based on these ideas. All students need interesting, meaningful content that is relevant to their personal preferences and experiences, and that piques their interests, encouraging them to seek more information and further exposure. Students also need learning activities that expose them to new ideas, concepts, people, places, and events. (We are so dedicated to this premise that it is a cornerstone of the Enrichment Triad Model; Renzulli, 1977.)

What Do Talented Students Need?

Our most able students need opportunities to identify authentic, real-world problems, grapple with real-world complexity, seek solutions, and create products to solve these problems. They need teachers who regularly expose them to enriching experiences, offer them choices, and encourage them to work independently or in small groups as they stretch themselves to achieve at high levels. Talented students also need time to think, reflect, understand, and experience challenging content. They need to learn to expend effort and employ study skills that enable them to achieve at increasingly higher levels than they previously believed possible.

These types of opportunities should be made available to all students, especially those who are academically talented, but, at a very minimum, we believe that curriculum compacting must be implemented for high-potential and gifted learners in order to provide them with academic challenge in school. Indeed, we would argue that good instruction for talented and high-potential learners can and should always begin with the compacting process.

Gifted students and high-potential learners often earn top grades without expending effort in school. Many of these students fail to encounter challenge and never learn how it feels to deal with content that is initially difficult for them. Many who have excelled in school and earned top grades without any real effort come to mistakenly believe that being smart means that they do not have to work very hard. When high-potential students and gifted learners encounter true academic challenge for the first time, they may experience fear and anxiety and may begin to make false assumptions. They sometimes exhibit a sense of panic and draw the inaccurate conclusion that they are not really as smart as they had previously believed. Other students incorrectly assume that their parents and teachers were wrong; they are not really smart or gifted, because for them, being identified as gifted really means that they should be able to excel in school without investing a good deal of time or effort.

Providing students with curriculum compacting, offered early and across as many content areas as possible, heads off these misconceptions and helps all students develop mindsets that support them when learning complex skills and concepts becomes frustrating and causes early failures, incorrect answers, and ineffective solutions. This truth is both important and essential in molding young adults to understand the power of effort, repletion, self-evaluation, resiliency, and resolve.

Curriculum compacting enables both curriculum and instruction to be paced in response to students’ individual strengths and past achievements, especially when this mastery is not aligned with the progress and achievement of the average student in a given classroom. Most academically talented students learn more quickly than others of their age and require a more accelerated pace of instruction than their peers. Sometimes, these learners need a chance to think more deeply about one aspect of a lesson than others, as they may, at certain times and under certain circumstances, become passionately engaged with a topic or experience burning desires to thoroughly understand some aspect of the curriculum. Sometimes, students’ intense interests will actually slow their progress through a compacted version of the regular curriculum, especially when they choose to explore and investigate topics or interests with a depth or breadth that extends beyond the regular curriculum plan.

Compacting also enables teachers to escalate the curricular challenge for students who absolutely need to engage with tasks and problems that are cognitively complex. This elevated level of cognitive demand is critical for this group of students, for the greatest contributor to the underachievement of gifted and talented students is the lack of challenge that they encounter in elementary and middle school (Reis, Hébert, Díaz, Maxfield, & Ratley, 1995). High-potential and academically talented learners should grapple with curriculum, instruction, and the completion of products that are complex, challenging, and deep. Some students will need support and direction to tackle more difficult work, while other academically talented students may actually need less direction from their teachers, depending on the level of tasks and type of work. The learners who may be able to work more independently are often those with intense interests or the capacity to identify interests that they may want to pursue.

Our work with certain components of the SEM for all students has demonstrated that teachers who encourage students to engage and tackle more advanced content and subsequently “support their struggle” make a difference in the type of challenging work that some students can pursue.

According to Vygotsky’s (Vygotsky & Cole, 1978) Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) theory, students’ actual developmental level, as determined by the independent work they can complete, is markedly different than the work they can accomplish with adult guidance and support. In essence, the zone of proximal development ranges from the lower level work a student can perform on his or her own without any assistance, as compared to a student’s upper area, defined as those tasks that the student is unable to perform even with adult assistance. Student work within the ZPD consists of challenging tasks that students can complete with assistance from a supportive adult who can help students learn the methods for engaging in more challenging work.

The enrichment example we use most often to illustrate the ZPD is the Renzulli Type III independent or small-group experience. Without adult support and guidance, students’ advanced projects would not be as advanced nor might they have even been attempted. All high-potential students deserve the opportunity to participate in schoolwork that is sufficiently challenging to require adult assistance in order to achieve and excel. The role of the teacher is to serve as a guide or coach to help students pursue challenging and engaging work and to support them as they learn to struggle and grapple with tasks that they would not be able to accomplish independently.

How Does Compacting Challenge and Engage Academically Talented Students?

Compacting provides the time necessary to allow high-potential and advanced students to experience challenging work at a young age. If it begins in the primary grades, and is provided often, participating students engage in thought-provoking and complex learning activities, ultimately enabling these students to learn to expend effort and subsequently achieve long-term academic success. In other words, encountering challenge earlier prepares students to deal with later challenges in advanced classes in high school and also in competitive colleges. Compacting precludes and often halts the feelings of fright and dread that they may otherwise feel when first encountering difficult work.

Compacting for advanced learners should avoid asking these students to use their compacted time to serve as tutors or teachers for classmates who have not yet achieved mastery of the related curriculum. In too many classrooms across our country, smart kids are asked to teach or instruct other students, often those who struggle to learn content. This practice happens too often, and teachers must understand that academically talented kids are often the worst candidates to assist other students.

Why? Because some of these students process new concepts and skills more quickly than their peers. They make cognitive “leaps” and see relevant evidence that allows them to make inferences and draw conclusions that must be explained to others. Students who are prime candidates for compacting don’t follow traditional learning patterns, and sometimes, they actually can’t explain how they have learned something or the steps they have used to solve a math problem, write a cohesive paragraph, improvise a musical segment, or complete an assignment.

Although we want all students to be collaborative learners, academically talented students ultimately should not be used to teach other students for at least two reasons. First, if these students spend their time teaching other students content that they have already mastered, they don’t have the opportunity to use that time to expand their own learning and engage with new and advanced content. This is inherently unfair. Second, as we noted, academically talented students can’t always explain how to do something that they mastered years earlier, often without any practice or effort. That kind of teaching and tutoring is best left to professional educators.

The curriculum compacting process includes opportunities to identify and eliminate content standards that some students have already mastered. It also helps educators identify the related learning tasks that some students do not need to do. Our research has consistently shown us that most advanced learners are regularly assigned work that asks them to practice skills and concepts they have already learned. These students have to wait for peers to catch up, rather than learning something new. This practice can be prevented if students have their content knowledge assessed before they start any new work. A hallmark of curriculum compacting is that students can be assigned more advanced materials, concepts, and skills if and when they demonstrate competency.

Curriculum compacting stops students from being assigned “more of the same” work. When a student has the opportunity to participate in a unit or subject area preassessment, yet is still asked to participate in the same instruction, tasks, and practice as those students who did not demonstrate prior mastery, that action sends a not-so-subtle message to all of the students in the class: “I am treating everyone in this class as if they were just one person, with the same needs and learning rates. I will teach to the middle.” It is also the fastest way to kill the love of learning, dampen intrinsic motivation, and develop the Mark Twain and Woody Allen mindset we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter.

When teachers compact curriculum well, they help students identify work that is interesting and challenging. They provide choices about what students can do with the time saved by compacting. In our national study of curriculum compacting (Reis, Westberg et al., 1998), we found that the biggest challenge teachers encountered was determining what to give students to do during the time saved by compacting. Teachers actually learned very quickly to identify students’ strengths and to eliminate previously mastered learning standards, goals, and their related instruction and practice work. But a problem occurred when some teachers then had to identify challenging and engaging replacement work that was either based on students’ interests or teachers’ decisions. Often, teachers just did not know what to assign. Instead, they used and implemented whatever they had readily available—games, puzzles, nonchallenging writing or reading assignments, or worksheets (in our opinion, the worst of all options).

Curriculum compacting enables students to have some independence and choice about their learning. It also gives them time to learn from their teachers and interact with other students, when possible, at a similar level of l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• Chapter 1 An Overview of Curriculum Compacting
• Chapter 2 How to Compact Curriculum for Students
• Chapter 3 Replacement Activities for Students to Pursue in Time Saved by Curriculum Compacting
• Chapter 4 Enrichment, Acceleration, and Grouping Strategies That Enhance Curriculum Compacting
• Chapter 5 Compacting Challenges and Research-Based Strategies to Address These Issues
• Chapter 6 Successful Compacting Case Studies
• Chapter 7 Assessment Strategies for Measuring Content Mastery and Students' Interests
• Chapter 8 Frequently Asked Questions and Answers About Compacting
• REFERENCES
• APPENDIX A: TOTAL TALENT PORTFOLIO
• APPENDIX B: INTEREST-A-LYZERS
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS