The Gifted Child: The Difference between Bright and Gifted

When a child is struggling at school, it eventually becomes apparent and supports are available to help them. There are individual resource hours, group resource hours, special needs assistants and a number of waivers available.  Granted parents would like more, but over the past 20 years massive improvements in special education needs have been made.

We have names – dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, which makes it easier to explain what the specific struggle.  These names are loosely called Learning Disabilities but I prefer the term Learning Differences because everybody can learn, but we all learn differently.

Bright children are those who tend to succeed better in a typical school setting. They are the teacher pleasers. They work, perhaps, harder than their gifted counterparts and receive praise for those efforts. They stay out of trouble, are compliant in class, get As, and complete their work. Naturally parents and teachers alike are happy to have these kinds of students.

These qualities often are mistaken as signs of giftedness. This distinction is worth discussion. Based on Janice Szabos’ development of this concept, here are a few ways to understand the differences;

The gifted learner asks the questions; the bright child knows the answer:The bright, above-average student, as previously mentioned is likely to get As. They are great at memorising.They comprehend at a high level, absorb information, and complete their work. The gifted learner, on the other hand, already knows. They have an amazing memory for detail and possesses a lot of information about the topic at hand.

Where the bright child accepts and readily retains information about the topic, the gifted learner manipulates that information in order to draw unique inferences. Certainly, the bright child performs at the top of the group. The gifted learner is the beyond the group.

The gifted learner knows without working hard; the bright child works hard to achieve:  For the bright child, the average classroom teacher offers precisely what this student craves: clear expectations, a path to an A, and an environment where this sort of success is rewarded. However, where they may very well earn those As, the gifted learner is far less likely to be motivated at all by grades; where the bright child needs 6-8 repetitions for mastery, the gifted needs only 1-2. Bright children will copy the teacher’s model response to a question or task accurately, while gifted one’s will be original and continually developing.

A bright child enjoys school; the gifted learner enjoys self-directed learning. The bright child is interested and attentive at school; listens to the material and is receptive and enjoys her peers. The gifted learner, conversely, is more than merely interested in the way that seasons change: he is highly curious about it. She shows her attentiveness by staying in her seat and keeping her eyes on the teacher. But he is genuinely mentally–and sometimes physically–involved in the topic. He may have a hard time listening to the discussion of the Earth’s movement around the sun without actually moving his hands and arms in an elliptical fashion. When the lesson in over, she finds her friends; he prefers the teacher or some other adult in the room. Or perhaps he prefers working alone. She is receptive at school; he can be downright intense at school. She may enjoy the curriculum and its pace; he may tolerate it or even rebel against the slowness of it.

The bright child has a good imagination but the gifted learner uses their imagination to experiment with ideas and hunches: Her ideas are clever, but his are original. She can see an alternate route to a solution; he can easily “track” two or more approaches to a similar solution simultaneously. Because she is clever, she can find relationships between loosely connected ideas; but he, perhaps, values the very non-conformity of concepts–and looks for ways to draw even further distinctions between them.
Teasing out the distinctions between Gifted and Bright, for others to see, is not easy. What is required, is defining giftedness as something that is beyond just being a high achiever. Often gifted students are high achievers but, perhaps just as often, they are not. This is why being able to draw the fine line is so important.

Gifted children can struggle at school too, but it is usually not as apparent.  Just as some children find it difficult to keep up with their peers, gifted children can find it equally as difficult to hold themselves back and stay at the pace of the rest of the class.

It’s not that they think that they are better than everyone else, just that they simply learn at a different pace.  Gifted students can easily fall behind in class because they get bored and switch off.  They finish their work sooner and want to walk around or they start talking to other students and interrupt them.  Their behaviour can lead to them being labelled as disruptive.

Parents of gifted children face lots of challenges, this first of which is understanding the difference between bright and gifted.

Parents often find bring up the subject of giftedness with the teacher very difficult.  They fear being thought of as ‘those kind of parents’, they ones who think that their ‘Johnny is better than everyone else’.  They particularly find it difficult when the child has been causing behavioural problems for the teacher.  Sometimes teachers don’t recognise the signs.  Children are labelled as ‘dreamers’ or ‘switched off’, they ‘lack focus’ or ‘challenge’ the teacher; ‘they ask too many questions’.

Resources are available in schools for gifted students, but as a parent you may need to push for them. Teachers are looking out for learning dis-abilities but it could be that your child’s ability may be holding them back!  Be your child’s advocate.  An excellent starting point is http://www.giftedkids.ie or contact us here at Hummingbird Learning Centre.

 

Reference: Janice Szabos as quoted in Differentiating Instruction in the Regular Classroom by Diane Heacox, Free Spirit Publishing, 2001.

Appropriate Reading for Kids

We always like to take books with us on our holidays.  I love nothing better than sitting in the sunshine reading my book.  It’s one of my favourite ways to unwind on holiday – assuming there is sunshine!

I’m also a great fan of libraries. Everything about them appeals to me: the rows of books, the orderliness, the calmness, the potential hidden between the covers.  We used to go to the library every Friday when we were children & I brought my kids there too.

So armed with his library card, I sent my son into the library the morning before we were going on our holidays.  His mission was to find a book for his dad, who likes to read biographies. As he is a keen cyclist, my son thought that dad would like a book about Lance Armstrong & chose the book by the Irish whistleblower, Emma O’Reilly (always good to have an Irish perspective).  However, the librarian wouldn’t allow him to take it out because it was an adult book!

When I queried it, (I assumed it might have been because of drug taking in the book), I was told that my 13yr old couldn’t take out books from the adult section.  Now I’m absolutely fine with that rule if he was taking out 50 Shades of Grey, but a sports biography? Don’t we want to encourage reading?

Most of the children I work with dislike reading when they first come to us. In school, books are banded according to various criteria and matched to perceptions of pupils’ ability. This means that some pupils never get access to the books that they would most like to read and share with others, as they are always constrained by the level they have reached. Some pupils never progress through all the levels and they end up reading what they call ‘baby’ books, which only serve to undermine their confidence further.

The Dyslexia Association of Ireland (DAI) held its 7th European Conference in the Newman Building, UCD, Belfield, Dublin 4, on April 25th 2015. The conference brought together experts from Ireland, the UK and Europe to share current research on dyslexia, with a focus on Innovation in Assessment and Teaching.

One of the Keynote speakers, Jonathan Solity in his presentation “Are Synthetic Phonics Programmes and the Phonics Screen Major Causes of Dyslexia?” stated “There is no sound evidence base on which books can be banded or levelled. Schools need to move away from thinking about matching books to pupils’ ability, be clear about the skills that pupils have mastered, and the extent to which they will be able to read any books that they share with more experienced readers.”

In other words, allow the children read books that interest them.  Encourage them to expand their vocabulary. Buy a really good thesaurus dictionary, keep it beside them and help them to find out the meanings themselves.  Use the internet to get the meaning of new words.

Focus on the purpose of reading, which not to read to at a predetermined level, but to share ideas and knowledge.

October is Dyslexia Awareness Month.

Elaine Sparling is the creator of the Hummingbird Learning Method® and is launching the online version of their popular workshop The Secrets to Successful Spelling™ on October 31, 2015. Based in Adare, Co Limerick and Tralee Co Kerry, she works with clients on a one to one basis and can be contacted on 087-2996054 or through their website www.hummingbirdlearning.com

Dyslexia & Me: Richard Branson

At Hummingbird Learning Centre we always say that dyslexia is a wonderful thing – it’s just that it needs a different strategy for reading & writing.

I remember when the Virgin Megastore opened in Ireland. I was working in Dublin in the late 80’s early 90’s and it felt so cool,modern & kind of dangerous to be in there, browsing through the records. The store had caused all kinds of outrage because they were selling condoms openly on the counter, flouting the law at the time. The radio waves were jammed with moral condemnation, probably I suspect, to the delight of its owner, the maverick entrepreneur, Richard Branson.

Early in his life, Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Media, struggled with dyslexia. “I struggled with dyslexia when I was at school, long before it was widely known—my teachers just thought I was just stupid, lazy or both. Words just looked like jumbles of letters on the blackboard to me.”

Richard Branson has made a name for himself by mixing creative passion with business ideas. His first commercial success came after he founded his dream business: a record label. That company, called Virgin Records, produced the Mike Oldfield album “Tubular Bells,” which was later used in the film The Exorcist.

But that wasn’t Branson first business.  His first was a magazine that he started while still at school. The magazine was so successful that he left school early to continue with it.  I always think that this was incredible.  Here was a guy who struggled with reading and writing, yet he started a magazine, where his trade and tools were words!

In a blog post on Virgin’s website, Branson attributed the Virgin brand’s success to his dyslexia: “However, there are still many dyslexics out there, especially young people, who feel held back by their condition. I used my dyslexia to my advantage and learned to delegate those tasks I wasn’t so good it. This freed me up to look at the bigger picture, and is one of the main reasons I have been able to expand the Virgin brand into so many different areas.”

That ability to see the ‘big picture’ is one of the many positive attributes of dyslexia.

There are many, many talented dyslexics out there,” Branson wrote. “In fact, some of the most creative people happen to have the condition.”  One of his ‘big picture’ ideas really couldn’t be any bigger – he created a company to make commercial SPACE travel a reality!

In addition, Richard Branson owns his own train company, an airline, a media group and even a Caribbean island, but it’s not all about making money.  He takes a different approach to customer care.  He advocates for looking after your staff first, then they will look after the customers. “I have always believed that the way you treat your employees is the way they will treat your customers, and that people flourish when they are praised.” “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.”

Branson also knows the value of making mistakes, something people who do dyslexia often find difficult: “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over. You learn by doing, and by falling over, and it’s because you fall over that you learn to save yourself from falling over.

He credits dyslexia with another of his signature management techniques: the habit of always taking notes. He writes in his 2014 book “The Virgin Way” that he learned as a child that if he ever had a chance at remembering anything, he’d need to jot it down. To this day, he says he carries a notebook everywhere.

The handwritten note habit has come in handy in management, negotiation, and even legal situations — he’s submitted his notebooks as evidence in lawsuits, he says.

It’s one of the “most powerful tools” in his “bag of business tricks,” Branson writes.

Dyslexia, Branson claims, actually made him a better manager, he wrote in his 2012 book “Like a Virgin,” and it became what he considers his “greatest strength.”

October is Dyslexia Awareness Month

#DyslexiaAwarenessMonth #DyslexiaAwarenessWeek

This month is International Dyslexia Awareness Month & here in Ireland, this week is Dyslexia Awareness Week.

Whenever someone tells me that they are dyslexic, I always say ‘Hi Dyslexic, I’m Elaine’.  Usually they’ll look at me quizzically and say ‘no – I have dyslexia’, to which I reply with ‘great, show it to me’. With their patience beginning to grow thin, they will explain that they have it in their head but I’m curious, so I want to know where in their head they have it. ‘In my brain’ they practically shout at me but I’m tenacious, I want to know specifically where they have it and how do they know that they have it and when do they know that they have it.

Interestingly, they are usually only aware of it when reading, writing or spelling.  The rest of the time they are completely unaware that they are doing dyslexia.  That is it – you are not dyslexic! Dyslexia is something that you do!

Dyslexia is a pattern that you run and because it is something that you do naturally, you are really unaware of it. You are unaware of all the wonderful abilities dyslexia brings to you because it’s just a part of you.  People who do dyslexia can be incredible problem solvers and innovators. They are fantastic with machinery and engineering.  They are amazing crafts people, golfers, builders and snooker players because they can see angles and potential in lumps of rock and clay.

This very ability though, is not a great strategy to run when reading, writing & spelling.  The ability to move & manipulate images in your head, means that you can also do this with words & letters.  Words & letters however, must remain visable, be still and keep their shape in order for us to read, write and spell.  So a person who does dyslexia needs a different strategy to be able to do this with ease.

In school, the curriculum is taught with a massive emphasis on phonics – even though English is not a particularly phonetic language.  It works reasonably well for most children but for others it doesn’t. They need a completely different strategy, one that compliments their natural abilities, rather than shoehorning them into a size that doesn’t fit.  Yes if you push hard enough, they can squeeze into phonics, but they will be hobbling along for the rest of their lives.

A visual strategy, such as the Hummingbird Learning Method® where they learn to control their images, works like magic for people who do dyslexia and indeed for anyone who struggles with spelling.  The beauty of a visual strategy is that it works for every language as it doesn’t depend on sounds, so the student’s Irish, French, Spanish, Japanese, or any other language also improves.

So remember – Dyslexia is a wonderful gift to have, it is just not the best strategy to run when reading, writing or spelling.  Dyslexia is simply something you do – it’s not who you are.

If you , or someone you know is struggling with Dyslexia, please let them know about us.  We are in Adare & Tralee.  If they are too far to travel (people come to us from all over), let them know about our online course, The Secrets to Successful Spelling™.  It will shortly be available.  Just email me at elaine@hummingbirdlearning.com & I will put them on my notification list so that they will be among the first to know when it is launched & can avail of the special launch price.

Have a great week,

Elaine

Homework – A Thorny Issue

“Homework is one of the thorniest issues at primary level”. Not my words but those of Peter Mullen of the Irish National Teachers Organisation, in an article in the Irish Examiner in November 2013.

The Department of Education in Ireland has no formal policy on the length of time homework should take. I’m going to repeat that – there is no national policy on the length of time that homework should take or how much homework is given.  Each school is free to make its own policy.  In many ways, the lack of a formal policy is a good thing. Nobody wants a situation where home work is done with a stopwatch – not a second more, not a second less.

Homework is a contentious issue.  Some parents rate teachers based on how much homework they give – too much & the teacher mustn’t be teaching them in class at all, too little and the teacher is way too laid back.  Other parents decide that a school is more or less academic than other schools based on the amount of homework given. The consensus being that the longer the students spend on homework the more academic (and therefore better) the school.

I know of one parent, who decided that the teacher, who was also the principal, wasn’t giving enough homework to the class. That parent went to town on the teacher, who gave in and increased the homework from 30 – 40 min to 2.5 hours per night!  The pupils were in 4^th class and no other parents were consulted before the massive increase in workload.  The fact that there isn’t a formal national policy gave the other parents little comeback when this happened.  The school set the policy.

There is a lot more to doing homework than the time it takes to do it but giving a time frame is at least an easy guideline for parents.  However, when I checked the homework policies of various national schools on time to be spent on homework in sixth class, some schools recommend up to 50% more time than others.

An article in The Irish Teachers’ Journal in November 2014 entitled ‘An Evaluation of the Utility of Homework in Irish Primary School Classrooms’ by Joanne Jackson and Lorraine Harbison, concluded that,  based on their research  it is not the giving of homework per se that is of value but that the type of homework that is administered is more important.

They go on to say:  Homework remains a central part of the primary school curriculum that affects teachers and teaching, children and learning, families and home-school communication. Despite this reality, there is limited evidence on the utility of homework. As with the findings of Van Voorhis (2004), too little attention has been given to the purposes of homework and communication between home and school about homework policies. Communication should work both ways, but all the literature refers to home-school communication in relation to homework rather than what could really be deemed the more appropriate term, school-home!

A number of key themes arose during the questionnaire, namely the lack of knowledge of the expectations of parents, partially due to the homework policy being poorly communicated to parents and the juxtaposition of positive and negative views of homework amongst parents. Even more disappointing, is the absence of the voice of the child in the debate although the curriculum advocates that children should be active agents in their own learning rather than submissive partakers. What is apparent is that radical overhaul of homework needs to take place and it is vital that all involved are given opportunities to voice opinions in order to develop the most effective strategies possible which will maximise children’s learning potential.

In March 2015 the UK newspaper The Telegraph ran a story called ‘Homework around the world: how much is too much?’ In it they claim that there is little data on how much time primary school students spend working on homework, but studies have failed to find any relationship between time spent of homework during primary school and academic achievement.

The debate continues in secondary school. The amount of time secondary school children spend on homework varies hugely around the world, depending on the pressures and expectations of each country.

According to the international Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and various education research partners, 15-year-olds in Shanghai spend the most amount of time on homework, at an average of 13.8 hours per week. Students in Finland spend just 2.8 hours on homework per week, but manage to still perform well on academic tests, despite the correlation between time spent on homework and success. British 15-year-olds spend an average of 4.9 hours per week on homework, which is exactly the same as the overall OECD average.

Ireland was not included in the list of 62 countries.

Elaine Sparling is the creator of the Hummingbird Learning Method® and is about to launch an online version of their the popular workshop The Secrets to Successful Spelling™. Based in Adare, Co Limerick and now also in Tralee Co Kerry, she works with clients on a one to one basis and can be contacted on 087-2996054 or through their website www.hummingbirdlearning.com

An Education System that Doesn’t Teach Subjects.

Imagine a world where your school day was no longer dominated by subjects, such as maths or history or geography, but instead everything was jumbled up and you were taught by topic instead.

Crazy huh?  It would never work.  How could a teacher possibly teach a topic instead of a subject?  What’s the difference anyway?

Well in Helsinki in Finland they are doing just that – teaching by topic rather than by subject.  Finland has always taken a radical approach to education and its one that works!  Up to very recently, when they were taken over by Asian countries such as Singapore, Finland consistently topped the PISA international literacy league tables published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Every teacher in Finland, must have a minimum of a Master’s degree. Being a teacher in Finland is afforded the same social standing as being a doctor. So why are they changing what seems to be a very good system already?

Marjo Kyllonen, Helsinki’s education manager explains: “It is not only Helsinki but the whole of Finland who will be embracing change. We really need a rethinking of education and a redesigning of our system, so it prepares our children for the future with the skills that are needed for today and tomorrow. There are schools that are teaching in the old fashioned way which was of benefit in the beginnings of the 1900s – but the needs are not the same and we need something fit for the 21st century.”

Pasi Silander, the Helsinki City Council’s development manager, shared the council’s view: “What we need now is a different kind of education to prepare people for working life. Young people use quite advanced computers. In the past the banks had lots of bank clerks totting up figures but now that has totally changed. We therefore have to make the changes in education that are necessary for industry and modern society.”

Subject-specific lessons – an hour of history in the morning, an hour of geography in the afternoon – are already being phased out for 16-year-olds in the city’s upper schools. They are being replaced by what the Finns call “phenomenon” teaching – or teaching by topic. For instance, a teenager studying a vocational course might take “cafeteria services” lessons, which would include elements of maths, languages (to help serve foreign customers), writing skills and communication skills.

More academic pupils would be taught cross-subject topics such as the European Union – which would merge elements of economics, history (of the countries involved), languages and geography.

There are other changes too, not least to the traditional format that sees rows of pupils sitting passively in front of their teacher, listening to lessons or waiting to be questioned. Instead there will be a more collaborative approach, with pupils working in smaller groups to solve problems while improving their communication skills – mirroring what happens in the business world.

Given the resistance to the introduction of the New Junior Cert, I suspect that there would be little appetite in Ireland, currently, for going as far as ditching traditional subjects. Even in Finland, the reforms have met objections from teachers and principals – many of whom have spent their lives focusing on a particular subject only to be told to change their approach.

Helsinki’s education manager Ms Kyllonen has been advocating a “co-teaching” approach to lesson planning, with input from more than one subject specialist. Teachers, in Finland, who embrace this new system can receive a small top-up in salary.

About 70 per cent of Helsinki’s high school teachers have now been trained in adopting the new approach. “We have really changed the mind-set,” said Mr. Silander from Helsinki City Council. “It is quite difficult to get teachers to start and take the first step… but teachers who have taken to the new approach say they can’t go back.”

And it appears that students are benefiting too. In the two years since the new teaching methods were introduced, pupil “outcomes” – they prefer that word to standards – have improved.

All Finnish schools are obliged to introduce a period of “phenomenon-based teaching” (teaching by topic) at least once a year. These projects can last several weeks. In Helsinki, they are pushing the reforms at a faster pace with schools encouraged to set aside two periods during the year for adopting the new approach. Ms Kyllonen’s blueprint, to be published later this month, envisages the reforms will be in place across all Finnish schools by 2020.

The eyes of the education world will be upon Finland as it opts for change: will it be able to retain or improve its showing in the PISA league tables and if it does, how will the rest of the education world react? If Finland succeeds, would we ever adopt a similar approach here, in the ‘Land of Saints & Scholars’?

Elaine Sparling is the creator of the Hummingbird Learning Method® and is about to launch an online version of their the popular workshop The Secrets to Successful Spelling™ . Based in Adare, Co Limerick and now also in Tralee Co Kerry, she works with clients on a one to one basis and can be contacted on 087-2996054 or through their website http://www.hummingbirdlearning.com