Students who are

mathematically gifted
Identifying Gifted Students
What can teachers do?
The four categories for adapting math content for
gifted students
Strategies to Avoid!

Identifying Gifted Students

1. High Abilities - Intuitive knowledge of mathematical concepts
2. High Interest - passion for the subject, but may have to work
hard to learn it
The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) describes
gifted students as someone who shows, or has the potential for
showing, an exceptional level of performance in one or more areas
of expression
. Who Identifies these students? What should we be looking for?

Identifying Gifted Students

Typically parents or teachers identify these students at
an early age
What to look for in the classroom?
They show strong number sense or spatial sense
They can make sense of math
They complete their work faster than other students
FALSE - they do not always complete their work faster!

What can we do?

Provide a positive image of math-smart role
models.
There tends to be a stigma in the media presenting
smart people as being uncool, inept outcasts

What can we do?

Provide a positive image of math-smart role models.
From This:
To This:

What can we do?

Dont wait for students to demonstrate their
math talent! Teachers must develop it
through a challenging set of tasks and
inquiry-based instruction
Possibly adapt curriculum to consider level,
complexity, breadth, depth, and pace

Four categories for adapting math

content for gifted students
1. Acceleration
2. Enrichment
3. Sophistication
4. Novelty

Acceleration
There are some students who know the material before you teach
it or learn it much quicker than the rest of the class
What are your options?
1. Reduce the amount of time these students spend on aspects of a
topic
2. Allow students to explore similar topics as their classmates but
focus on higher-level thinking, more complex or abstract ideas
3. Allow students to pace their own learning (must be independent)
Note: Moving students up a grade level in math wont work if the
learning is still at a slower pace

Enrichment
Provide activities that go beyond the topic of
study (not necessarily grade level curriculum)

Group investigations
Solving real problems in the community, or at their
school
Writing letters to outside audiences

Sophistication
Raise the level of complexity or pursue greater depth
Example: While studying a unit on place value, gifted students can
learn other numeration systems such as:

Novelty
Introducing completely different material from the
regular curriculum
This could be in the form of: After school clubs, out
of school projects, collaborative school experiences

Collaborative school experiences - includes students

from a variety of grade levels and classes,
volunteering for special math projects with a
teacher, principal or resource teacher

Novelty
Example: Students perform a large
scale investigation of the amount of
food thrown away at lunch

Strategies to AVOID
Assigning more of
the same work

Giving free time to Assigning gifted

early finishers
students to help

struggling learners.
This puts them in
the position of
tutor instead of
creating a deeper
and more complex
level of
understanding

Strategies to AVOID
Gifted pull-out opportunities - Independent enrichment on a
they are usually not related to computer - does not engage students
math
with math in a way that will enhance
conceptual understanding and
support their ability to justify their
thinking

Final Thought
Gifted students should be introduced to the
joys and frustrations of thinking deeply about a
wide range or original, open-ended, or complex
problems that encourage them to respond
creatively in ways that are original, fluent,
flexible, and elegant. (Sheffield, 1999)