Providing Curriculum Alternatives To Motivate Gifted Students. ERIC Digest E524

How to get the best performance from every student is a challenging task, especially in classrooms where there are many different levels of ability. Often, students who are gifted are not challenged to perform to their full capacity because they seem to be doing just fine. Unfortunately, these students may never achieve their potential because they have not had complex tasks and have never learned to really work. This digest presents two strategies to help highly able students get more out of school. Teachers may find that the following strategies enable them to challenge and motivate not only gifted students, but also other students who have talents and abilities in specific areas.STRATEGIES FOR MOTIVATING STUDENTS TO WORK AND LEARNGifted students benefit from participating in activities that are different from those designed for other students. Such alternative activities should extend basic concepts and allow students to connect their personal interests to the course curriculum. Extra credit activities should be avoided as they send a message that more work is required. Two strategies that are helpful to teachers in managing alternative activities are COMPACTING and CONTRACTS.

COMPACTING. Students who demonstrate previous mastery spend less time with the regular curriculum and more time with extension and enrichment opportunities.

CONTRACTS. Written agreements between teachers and students that outline what students will learn, how they will learn it, in what period of time, and how they will be evaluated. Contracts allow students to engage actively in the decision-making process, directing their course of study (Parke, 1989, pp.70-71).GUIDELINES FOR COMPACTINGThe following guidelines are useful for pretestable subject areas where students move between an instructional group and extension activities.

1. At the beginning of a unit, provide opportunities for interested students to demonstrate mastery in some way. The same activity may be used for postassessment.

2. Students who achieve a specified criterion or grade attend class only on the days when instruction includes concepts they have not mastered. On those occasions, they become part of the regular class and participate in assigned activities.

3. For each student who achieves a specified criterion level on the preassessment activity, prepare a contract listing required concepts, enrichment options, and specified working conditions. Check only the topics students have not mastered so they know when to join the larger group.

The following guidelines are useful when material may not be pretestable because it is unfamiliar to students. Compacting is still required because gifted students need less time than their age peers to learn new material.

1. Prepare a study guide that includes the same concepts for which all students will be responsible.

2. Offer the study guide opportunity to all students who have exhibited easy mastery of previous topics. Eligible students will be expected to learn the study guide material, but it is understood that they will spend the majority of their school time working on their extension tasks. Students should not be required to write out the answers for the content of the study guide. They may use any means they choose to learn the material, but must be able to demonstrate mastery.

3. Include dates when students must meet with the rest of the class to demonstrate their competence with the required concepts. Students who do not demonstrate competence must return to work with the class for the rest of the unit.

Thus, during a specific unit of time, students are moving back and forth between the teacher directed group and independent work on extension activities.GUIDELINES FOR CONTRACTSThe following guidelines are useful for pretestable subject areas where students are moving between instructional group and extension activities.

1. In one section of the contract, list the concepts or outcomes that the whole class will learn. In another section of the contract, list a variety of alternative or extension activities from which students may choose. These activities may be developed by the teacher, the student, or both. If extension activities are developed solely by the teacher, options should include "Your original idea" so that students can link their personal interests with the required curriculum. Ideas designed by the student must have teacher approval.

2. Students work on alternative activities on the days when the class is learning concepts they have previously mastered.

3. Students should be responsible for documenting their time. One option is to ask students to keep a log of their activities on the days they are not working with the rest of the class. Set guidelines for those activities.

4. Student outcomes or grades result from a combination of work completed with the class and a posttest or postassessment activity. The section on Guidelines for Evaluation of Alternative Work provides details.

The following guidelines are useful for subject areas that may not be pretestable because material is unfamiliar to students. In this case, teachers use a study guide with an independent study agreement, illustrated on the reverse.

1. Provide students with a study guide that contains a list of expected outcomes for a unit, which they may choose to achieve independently. Instead of working with the regular class, these students will research and present information about an alternative topic related to the general theme or unit.

2. Students work on the extended activity in school during the time the class is working with the regular content. Thus, the activity becomes their real work for the class period.

3. Students sign an agreement similar to the following illustration.