Gifted and Talented in the Early Years

Practical Activities for Children aged 3 to 6

Margaret Sutherland, Margaret Sutherland, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781446211090, 9781446211083
• eBook ISBN: 9781473903241
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

?This new edition advocates an inclusive approach and updates current theories, research and best practices in the field. The text incorporates 21st century skills, cultural perspectives and international education, and focuses on how to create appropriately challenging activities for the young gifted and talented child?
Gillian Eriksson, Coordinator: Gifted Education Program, School of Teaching,
Learning and Leadership, University of Central Florida

?This expanded edition builds on Margaret?s approach to teaching and learning, making us think how we can best include gifted and talented children in our early years settings. By providing opportunities for young children to learn from each other and from their communities and families, gifted and talented young learners can be appropriately challenged and recognised within an inclusive setting?
-Peter Merrotsy, Senior Lecturer in Gifted and Talented Education,
University of New England, Australia

Combining theoretical perspectives with practical activities, this book offers clear guidance on how to ensure you and your setting can identify and provide for very young children in your care who are gifted and talented. With an emphasis on providing the best learning opportunities for all, there is specialist advice for all staff working in early years settings.

New to this new edition is:

- information on recent research and new thinking in the field

- international views of gifted and talented young children

- links to the early years curriculum

- new activities and ideas

- extended coverage for young children aged 3 to 6

There are lots of ideas for things to try out in your setting, and photocopiable practical activities for parents to try out at home.

Margaret Sutherland is a Lecturer in Additional Support Needs at the University of Glasgow and Director of the Scottish Network for Able Pupils (SNAP).

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Including the gifted and talented in the early years

Some key points about the education of gifted and talented learners will be made in this chapter.

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• Adopting an inclusive approach to learning is helpful to young gifted and talented learners.
• Current learning theory and changes in the way we think about learning, ability and intelligence offer an opportunity to ensure all abilities are being challenged and celebrated.
• Labels for gifted and talented learners, while useful, can also be a hindrance. We need to focus on what the labels mean and try to come to some shared understandings about the terms used.
• Intelligence is difficult to define. It is our beliefs about intelligence that will influence our view of children in the early years setting and impact on individuals’ self-beliefs or mindsets.

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Who are the gifted and talented in your early years setting?

I wonder what picture you have in your mind of a child who is gifted and talented? Often we conjure up images of a round-faced kid with freckles and glasses. He/she always answers questions correctly and is often to be found on his/her own, usually doing science experiments. He/she is sometimes known as ‘the little professor’. Or perhaps it is the virtuoso violin player who happens to be four years old. He/she spends hours practising almost to the exclusion of everything else; he/she is quietly spoken and is good at mathematics as well. This kind of stereotyping, while common, is not helpful, particularly if we’re considering the education of young gifted and talented children within an inclusive education framework. For many, these narrow views of who the gifted and talented are will go on to shape and influence what they do with young children in their care.

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What does it mean to be gifted and talented in your setting? How might your views on gifted and talented children influence practice in your setting? What kinds of things do children do in your setting that make you say ‘wow!’?

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The early years setting should be an exciting place to be for all children. It is also the ideal place to discuss the education of gifted and talented children. Through the provision of appropriate activities and interaction with adults, the setting should offer young children the opportunity to:

• discover what they are interested in
• discover what they can do
• develop relationships with others (adults and children)
• learn to work alongside others (adults and children)
• take risks.

Early years settings, by their very nature, are often considered to be inclusive in the care and education of young children. The structure and practice within early years settings would seem to allow for the adoption of an inclusive approach to learning. For one thing, a play-centred curriculum allows for a child-centred approach: children drive the learning process. This is not to say that there is no structure and that goals are not set, it’s just that learning and development are seen as important and complementary, and the emphasis is not simply on targets and results. The child focus of staff and the flexible structure within early years allow for the development of inclusive practices.

Inclusion in the early years setting

Inclusion is an international concept stemming from the International Declaration on the Rights of the Child (UN, 1989). Inclusion can be looked at from two perspectives:

1. the current reality for particular groups of individuals for whom exclusion has been and continues to be the norm; and
2. an alternative concept of inclusion which encompasses all members of society rather than just a few.

In education the inclusion debate is often narrowed into a discussion about children who present with difficulties and where to educate them – in mainstream school or special schools? The world of gifted education has not been immune to this debate. Many programmes, centres and summer schools offer gifted individuals special pull-out programmes and opportunities. Blogs and websites discuss the relative merits of ‘schools for the gifted’. Traditionally in the UK education systems we have excluded ‘children that don’t fit’ – those with physical impairment, behaviour difficulties, learning difficulties and yes … even the gifted and talented. When we see a child doing something that is unusual in some way we often seek to identify what it is that is different and then we go about finding a label to explain this difference. We may even try to ‘fix’ the difference, just so they’re ‘normal’. While young children may react non-judgmentally to those who are different they are nonetheless developing an awareness of difference which may result in prejudices emerging and so it is important that educators think about encouraging awareness of, and positive attitudes to, diversity and difference within the setting. A shared view of inclusion does not exist at present, however, I would suggest that inclusion is about all individuals in society and as such assumes a ‘whole’ in which everyone has an equivalent part.

Feeling included

Feeling included, and of course the opposite, excluded, are feelings we will all have had from time to time. Consider the following example told to my colleague:

John found it really awkward taking Josie to playgroup. He was the only father in the area who had made the decision to stay at home and look after his children. He was never part of the incidental chat the women took part in and always felt out of things on the nursery trips. Equally he felt he had less and less in common with male friends. He had commented that if only there were less stereotypical images of who looks after children things might be better.

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Can you think of a time when you felt excluded? How did it make you feel? What was the impact of these feelings on your behaviour? What was the impact of these feelings on your self-esteem and self-worth? What would have helped you to feel more included?

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Gifted and talented children will sometimes feel excluded from the games their peers play. Sometimes staff interpret this as the gifted child having poor interpersonal skills and being immature. However this is not as simple as it might first appear. Let’s look at this from the gifted child’s perspective.

A group of children are playing in the house corner. The children have taken on traditional roles and are engaged in a make-believe game. The ‘baby’ in the ‘family’ is ill and is in bed. The gifted child approaches and the following happens:

Gifted child:	Can I play?
Mum:	OK.
Gifted child:	Can I be the doctor? I think I know what’s wrong with the baby.
Mum:	No.
Gifted child:	But I think I can make her better.
Mum:	She’s got a cold.
Gifted child:	No she hasn’t, I think she’s got malaria. You get that when a female mosquito bites you. What are the symptoms? Has she been in the tropics?
Mum:	She’s got a cold.
Gifted child:	I know how you make malaria better. She needs to come to hospital and she’ll need to get chloroquine, mefloquine, or quinine. Can I be the doctor?
Mum:	No. She’s got a cold. She’s not got your fancy illness. You can be the dog.

The gifted child walks away muttering under their breath saying I know how to make her better.

There are several things happening here but on a basic level the gifted child has been excluded from the game. There may be several reasons for this but we will look at two related issues:

1. The game is already established and the existing group do not want another person to join.
2. The gifted child wants to develop the plot using their knowledge of real-life issues which the rest have no experience of or interest in.

The first reason relates to group dynamics and this may or may not have anything to do with the child being gifted per se. The ‘mother’ designates a role for the gifted child that ‘fits’ with the existing story. Joining in on that basis means play can continue. The second reason, while it relates not only to gifted children, does throw up some particularly interesting issues for gifted children. Gifted children will often have in-depth knowledge about a subject or subjects. They can be good at connecting that knowledge to different situations. They can also make up complex plots and story lines in their heads. Their age peers may just not understand what they are talking about and so they set about excluding them from the game, thus re-affirming existing group dynamics. In the scenario above the gifted child walks away but another outcome could be tha...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• About the author
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• Preface
• 1 Including the gifted and talented in the early years
• 2 Identification
• 3 Activities and resources
• 4 Physical movement/motor development
• 5 Music
• 6 Literacy and language
• 7 Mathematics
• 8 Learning is fun and for all
• Glossary
• References
• Index