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Developing Your Child's
Gifts and Talents
Reading:
- Set aside time for reading each evening,
perhaps either at bedtime or after dinner. Be sure that your child has a
book available when he or she will be spending down time; waiting for an
appointment or while traveling.
- Develop a bibliography of books for the family to read
and discuss together. There are many wonderful book lists online.
Books can be requested from the Harford County Library website if they are not
available at your local branch. Some lists are as follows:
Children's
Book Lists, Book
Spot Young Adult List, the Great Books List
for older children.
- When the name of a famous person comes up
in conversation, suggest that your child read a biography about that person
and discuss what traits made them famous. Use
Biography.com or
Yahooligans! biography section as a starting place for information.
- Practice memory skills. Have your child
memorize poetry, lists of information such as the presidents in sequence,
geographical data, or pieces of music.
- Develop an interest. Get your child
interested in a topic. Often a topic that the entire family is interested in
is a great place to begin. Go on field trips to learn about the topic. Talk
to other people who are also interested in the same topic. Read from many
sources about the topic (encyclopedia, books, magazines, Internet articles,
etc.). Look at the history of this topic. Look at the changes over the
years. Look at the topic from other perspectives (from a scientist's point of
view, an artist's, an athlete's, a writer's, etc.) Try to spend months, even a
year, developing this interest. Display the information in an
interesting way, such as creating a scrapbook, posters or a PowerPoint slide
show.
- Choose something that you have to travel
to collect. For example, major league stadiums, minor league parks in
Maryland, state capitals, zoo visits, art museums. As you make a visit,
gather items that can be used to create a display about the visit such as a
collage or PowerPoint.
- Teach your child to ask questions. Try
the 5-whys. Ask a "why" question about a topic and then ask 4 more "why"
questions. Instead of asking your child how his day went in school each day,
ask him/her what the best question he/she asked that day. Let your child know
that you expect him/her to bear some of the responsibility of learning.
- Include your child in educational and
recreational decisions. Allow them to plan a trip. Teach him/her to read
a map. Search the Internet for information about the place. Have your child
develop a plan that includes transportation, lodging, food, admission costs,
etc. And don't forget to go!
- Have your child read from many different
areas: fiction, non-fiction. Select an interdisciplinary theme such as power,
patterns, structure, change, order vs chaos, conflict, exploration, force,
systems, and relationships. Look for this theme in the stories you read.
- Begin to study a daily word. This
can be delivered to your email inbox by a service such as
Miriam-Webster's Word of the Day
or Word
Central's BuzzWord, which is more suited to younger readers.
- Allow your child to establish a pen pal
in another country. Be careful to monitor all correspondence.
E-Pals is a good website that helps parents
monitor the correspondence.
Developing Thinking
Skills:
1. Use the following steps to develop
problem solving strategies:
Finding the problem
Planning
Data Collection
Defining the Problem
Generation of ideas
Selecting the solution (s)
Implementation
Evaluation
2. Use the following steps to develop
decision making strategies:
State the goal
Gather information
Establish criteria
Recognize and/or generate alternatives
Evaluate alternatives
Select the best course (s) of action
2. To develop creative, divergent thinking,
try using the following question starters:
In what ways might we ?..
What if??
How else could one??.
What hypothesis can you suggest to explain??
What will _________ be like in the future?
How would a dentist, an athlete, etc. solve this problem?
3. To develop critical, analytical thinking,
try using these prompts:
Explain your reasoning.
Why do you think that?
What are the parts that make up this problem?
What criteria or tests should we use in this case?
What do you think caused that?
How might we prove/disprove that?
Explain what the other side�s position is.
4. Metacognition is the ability to think
about our own thinking- to plan it, monitor it, evaluate it. Help your child to
develop these abilities by:
Modeling or thinking aloud
Asking the child to think aloud
Guiding students in developing a thinking plan
Helping them assess and critique their thinking
5. Ask questions like the following:
What is your purpose or goal?
What kind of end-product do you want to have?
What kind of problem is this?
What is your plan?
What do you know/not know about this?
What standards will you use to judge your work?
What was strong/weak about your thinking?
What did you learn for the future?
6. To develop a criteria for thoughtfulness
use the following suggestions:
Have you child examine a few topics in depth rather than a superficial coverage
of
many topics.
Encourage a sense of coherence and continuity.
Allow your child appropriate time to think and respond. Do not answer for your
child. It is perfectly fine to leave a question unanswered for a few days.
Ask challenging questions.
Structure challenging tasks.
Model thoughtfulness.
Have your child offer explanations and reasons for his/her conclusions.
Planning Chart:
What are you going to do?
What materials will you need?
What steps should you follow?
What problems might you encounter?
What might cause the problem?
What effects might happen if the problem arises?
How can you improve your plan?
Math:
1. Be sure your child understands place
value. Often the process becomes rote and the student does not really
understand the process. Try teaching your child in another base such as base 2
or 6. If your child understands bases, he/she will benefit greatly when higher
math processes such as fractions, measurement, etc. are taught.
2. Be sure your child understands the
following math properties:
Communicative property,
associative property, distributive property, order of operations. Go
to www.aaamath.com for resources and games
to help learn these important concepts.
3. Make sure your child understands that
there are many strategies that can be and should be used understand math. Some
are counting up, counting back, using manipulatives, drawing a picture of the
problem, making tens, using doubles, etc.
Try some of the following Problem Solving Tactics located on the web:
http://www.utexas.edu/student/lsc/handouts/806.html
4. Teach your child how to estimate an
answer to a math problem.
5. Teach your child to examine an answer to
see if it is a logical answer.
6. Teach your child to examine a word
problem to see if all the necessary information is available.
7. Have your child practice word problems.
Have them write their own word problems.
www.mathstories.com is an excellent site for word problems.
8. Play games that develop strategy
situations: chess, bridge, backgammon, checkers, orienteering games, etc.
9. Always show your child how math is
applicable in the real world. An excellent book that shows students how to
apply math to the real world is How Math Works.
10. Check out the following math sites on
the Internet:
http://amby.com/educate/math.html - this page has many well-annotated
links for various math topics.
http://falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/math.htm - this page has links to
activities, organizations and other math resources.
11. Have your child create his/her own
games.
Science:
1. Have your child start a collection.
2. Have them observe and record how
experiments change.
3. When doing an experiment, try using the
scientific method backwards: examine the results, state the steps, state the
materials needed to do the experiment, and then discuss the hypothesis. Do not
tell your child the hypothesis. Have them ask yes or no questions about the
possible hypothesis (The reason for this is that adults, including teachers,
want to give out too much information). After the questioning period, allow your
child to do some research to try and find out what the hypothesis might be.
After your child gives you a hypothesis, ask him/her to explain or defend his
position. This process might take several days. It is not necessary to give the
answer to the experiment the same day you do the experiment. Think time is a
wonderful thing!
4. There are many great science books.
Several are How Science Works, How Weather Works, How Nature Works, How Things
Work.
5. Try these websites:
http://www.rockwood.k12.mo.us/itech/websites.html
http://www.hhmi.org/coolscience
Parent
Support Systems:
- Organize a parent group to discuss
ways to develop your children's gifts and talents. Try not to allow the main
purpose of the group to be a gripe session about what is not being done for
gifted students. Act as an advocate for your child and the program.
- Attend one or more meetings HCPS Citizens
Advisory
Committee for gifted education.
- Search the Internet for great sites.
There are hundreds of fabulous sites that will help your gifted child.
- Join your state gifted organization
(Maryland's organization is called MCGATE (Maryland
Coalition for Gifted and Talented Education).
Dr. Carolyn R.
Cooper, Specialist
Maryland State Department of Education
Gifted and Talented Education
200 W. Baltimore St.
Baltimore, MD 21201
410.767.0363 (phone)
410.333.2050 (fax)
http://www.msde.state.md.us/
Other:
A collection of
articles to support the education and health of the gifted child
Website
devoted to books and articles for parents and educators of gifted children.
How Stuff Works website
Brainy Quotes
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