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Alexis Lawson

EDUC 2301.200

Intro SP Populations

Dr. Ellis

February 20, 2017

Maximizing Achievement for Potentially Gifted and Talented Students and Regulatory Minority

Students in a Primary Classroom.

Gifted and Talented is a school program that sees the potential of students to be ahead of

the learning curve of a average student. Gifted and Talented is based on grades and how fast a

student picks up on the material being taught in the classroom. In many school districts they offer

this program and teachers observe the students and offer this program to the students. Regulatory

Students are students who are slightly above average or average students that are taught at a

normal pace and not expected to catch on to the material being taught as fast as gifted students.

By separating students into two different categories this could potentially cause students to have

lower self esteem. In the article Maximizing Achievement for Potentially Gifted and Talented

Students and Regulatory Minority Students in a Primary Classroom, Mrs. Uresti, a first grade

teacher in Odessa Texas, decided to give her class a project that would test their skills and

learning abilities. The assignment was for each student to chose a topic that interest them and for

them to research, interview, and present the information that they had gathered to the people they

interviewed along with members of the community.

This was not just an assignment that was presented to the gifted children in her

classroom but was presented to the entire classroom. This project is a great idea to present in a

classroom so that every student has the ability to chose what kind of field they want to look into
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as well as giving the children something to look forward to when they are coming to school

instead of being presented with the traditional form of learning. Students were able to reach out

of their comfort zones and expand their knowledge of topics that interest them instead of being

forced to spend most of the day focusing on things that did not interest them. The students in this

classroom were said to have enjoyed this project and students that were originally problem

students were able to stay on task and become Star students because they had something to

look forward to when coming to school.

More school should follow the lead of this teacher in Odessa. By implementing

something like this students are able to make better decisions later in life on things that interest

them. Schools should offer a class like this for students in highschool so that they will be more

prepared to chose a career before entering into college and being thrown out into the real world

without have tested the waters of any field that they are interested in.

There is no problem with having schools implement a program like this. School districts

that offered this type of learning style could potentially see more successful students and be able

to see more gifted students than they normally would. Not all students are gifted in the aspect of

learning on a traditional scale but are still intellectually smart in other aspects of life.

This article is something that will help future teachers to implement different techniques

into the original ways of the classroom. Instead of doing the same stuff over and over by

implementing a project like the one stated teachers and students within the classroom are able to

learn something about other parts of the world broadening the knowledge of the teacher and the

students in the classroom. This would help to make a teacher more knowledgeable and better

understand the minds of their students in the class.

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Work Cited

Uresti, Ronda; Goertz, Jeanie; Bernal, Ernesto M. Roeper Review. Fall2002, Vol. 25 Issue 1,

p27. 5p. 1 Chart.