GEI00001 - Differentiation and the Gifted Learner

Course Description

How do teachers ensure that all students’ needs are being met in their classroom? What models, resources and strategies are available and effective for differentiating instruction for our highest achieving learners?   This two day conference, designed with the classroom teacher and building administrator in mind, focuses on curriculum resources and instructional strategies that promote achievement gains for high achieving and gifted students in heterogeneous classrooms and gifted classrooms.

Learn more about developing higher level questions and products, designing units that emphasize abstract conceptual understanding, teaching through a problem based learning approach, and applying models and frameworks that promote content expertise.   We will showcase Vanderbilt Programs for Talented Youth’s (PTY) new elementary integrated science and ELA units published by Prufrock Press and continue to provide workshops on our previously published ELA middle school units and models.  The recently published Jacob’s Ladder Reading Comprehension Program nonfiction series and newly released second editions of the current Jacob’s Ladder books will also be shared.

The hands-on sessions are led by curriculum developers, PTY faculty and staff, and nationally known experts in the field of gifted education including this year’s featured speakers – Kathy Gavin, Ph.D. and Shelagh Gallagher, Ph.D. Dr. Gavin, professor emerita at the University of Connecticut, is the co-developer of the Mentoring Mathematical Minds (M2 and M3) curriculum units, designed for high ability mathematicians in the elementary grades. Dr. Gallagher, author of several problem-based learning units through Royal Fireworks Press, is a nationally recognized expert in gifted education and problem-based learning.