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Many students have a gift for something—a skill or talent they do well or perhaps excel in. This is not the same as being a gifted learner. The National Association for Gifted Children defines giftedness as “students with gifts and talents who perform—or have the capability to perform—at higher levels compared to others of the same age, experience, and environment in one or more domains.” Typically, gifted learners have intellectual abilities and interests beyond their giftedness. They are represented in every demographic group and personality type.
According to the Davidson Institute, characteristics of gifted children include
- an ability to comprehend material several grade levels above their peers.
- a strong sense of curiosity.
- enthusiasm for unique interests and topics.
- a quirky or mature sense of humor.
- creative problem-solving and imaginative expression.
- an ability to absorb information quickly with few repetitions.
Giftedness is one category of exceptional learners—students who learn and develop differently than others or have exceptional learning styles, talents, or behaviors. These students fall outside the normal range of development. Like other exceptional learners, they require access to appropriate learning opportunities, support, and guidance to develop socially and emotionally and to grow within their areas of talent. Notably, a gifted child can be twice exceptional. They may have learning or processing disorders, such as a dyslexic student who is an excellent actor or debater or a gifted student with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
Gifted learners are not necessarily gifted writers. For many students, writing lags behind other cognitive skills. Young gifted children may not have the fine motor skills to keep up with their busy brains. Highly verbal children may have a large store of facts in their brains and a sophisticated vocabulary but struggle—or resist—putting their thoughts into writing. For highly imaginative students, gathering information from sources isn’t as much fun as writing stories with lots of action and excitement. Others prefer to write about fact-based subjects and find narrative writing to be a challenge. Finally, gifted writers might easily put words on paper, but their writing lacks organization and conciseness.
Teachers need concrete strategies to guide students appropriately along their individual pathways as they develop into accomplished writers and communicators. Anna Ingham called this “meeting students at their point of need.” Andrew Pudewa describes an optimal learning environment as “one that allows each child to progress at his rate, allowing sufficient repetition for mastery.” Encompassing both of these principles, the Structure and Style® writing method furnishes students, whether they excel or struggle, with effective techniques to improve their writing. The method works for students of any aptitude, and instruction can be tailored to support students at their point of need.
The Structure and Style method provides a foundation that develops competency, independence, and creativity. The key word outline allows a struggling student to collect and organize information from a source text, freeing him to learn how to write without pulling information from his brain. It provides constraints for the verbal student with a brain full of ideas to organize thoughts. For both writers, the checklist provides clear, concrete requirements for all elements of a composition, eliminating guesswork.
As students practice the method each year, they benefit from the review and reinforcement of working through those units again. Struggling students flourish from repeated experience with the structural models. Gifted writers enhance their skills with increased expectations and exposure to more advanced techniques that make their writing engaging. Because teachers continue to model each concept, students are guided appropriately toward mastery.
Supporting the range of aptitudes in a classroom, the Structure and Style method affords teachers both flexibility and resources to differentiate instruction for gifted students, whether they are strong or struggling writers. In “Structure and Style for the Gifted and Talented Student” (Episode 257), Andrew Pudewa describes filtering as an effective way to gradually guide gifted writers to independence for each unit in the Structure and Style for Students (SSS) or theme-based writing courses. More information about filtering can be found in the blog “Customizing Instruction to Meet Students’ Needs – Filtering.”
Adjusting the checklist is another powerful tool to customize instruction following the EZ+1 philosophy. IEW’s writing courses present stylistic techniques one at a time at a pace that enables students to use them correctly. Instructors add or remove items from the checklist to meet students at their point of need. For more information about EZ+1, customizing checklists, and the Online Checklist Generator™ , read “IEW’s Checklist – Supporting Student Success” and “Adjust the Checklist to Sharpen Students’ Saws.”
Gifted students have the potential to become future leaders. In The Leadership Journey: How Four Kids Became President, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin shares this with middle-grade readers: “Some of the most important qualities you may have been born with or you can develop are humility, empathy, resilience, self-awareness, self-reflection, the ability to communicate, and the willingness to take a risk.” Furnishing the minds of gifted learners and writers with tools to express themselves clearly, confidently, and persuasively empowers them to become leaders in whatever field they choose.
by Jean Nichols
