Friday, April 23, 2010

Gifted Kids

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of attending a lecture conducted by Dr Deborah Ruf entitled "Bright child, gifted or not?" She was lovely! Basically she went through the levels she outlines in her book titled 5 Levels of Gifted. Some interesting points that I jotted down to share are ...
  • where kids show a keen interest when they are young shows potential for future careers
  • no busywork
  • IQ's can be measured by suburb ie - professional people tend to have higher IQ's and tend to congregate by suburb, think Dr's, lawyers, accountants
  • siblings generally have a 15pt range of one another and are also close in range to their parents
  • married couples tend to be close in range to each other
  • many gifted kids don't do well with phonics, many prefer a whole to parts approach than part to whole
  • don't teach gifted kids expose and discuss, they are inquiry driven
  • a level 4 child will be ready for algebra by age 10
  • a HG child can go from not reading anything to reading at a adult level within 2 years
  • L5 kids tend to have a musical aptitude that isn't as present in other levels
  • we naturally like to do what we are good at, so look at kids when they are chilling out, what are they doing?
  • teachers teach to the top of the bottom 1/3 of the class
  • for math, single sex classes are best
  • girls do better in single sex high schools
  • HG kids can be left handers and highly excitable, also have sensory issues
  • in countries where kids are tracked from 9 or 10 the gifted kids tend to have better outcomes, think Asian countries
  • L5 kids are a suicide/depression risk in years 11 & 12 (late highschool)
  • Book rec about boys "What could he be thinking? How a man's mind really works" - the author doesn't go into giftedness but knows his stuff about boys/men
  • gifted kids, boys inparticular should not go to school until age 7
I am currently half way through her book so there will be more to come.

2 comments:

  1. Is there an author for the recommended book on boys?
    I was hoping you'd write up something about this... I don't need it, but I'm interested:-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I believe it is by Michael Gurian.

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...