Your student has qualified for the TAG program, but what does that mean?
How can you as their classroom teacher or parent/guardian better understand your student?
How can you meet their unique needs?
How can you advocate for them now and throughout their school experience?
There are so many questions and such diversity of gifted learners that there is no one answer to these questions. Here you will find a list of resources to help you better understand giftedness, the laws that affect gifted learning, and research that has been or is being conducted about this population. Acorn currently qualifies students who score in the 80th percentile or higher in their national age stanine on any area of the CogAT-8 for TAG, their talented and gifted pull-out program, but qualifiactions and definitions vary by district, state, and across the country and can be difficult to navigate. To help I have compiled this list of resources which includes website links to help with uderstanding, support, and professional development, as well as information on books for parents and teachers, and a list of books that support gifted kids with character to whom they can relate. This list is not exhaustive and is something that I will continue to update and modify to try to provide the best resources possible.
General Websites
AAGT- Arizona Association of Gifted and Talented
AAGT provides access to many resources that are important to both parents and teachers. The website provides links to state gifted law, infromation about current issues that affect gifted education, teacher education resources with access to professional development, parent and teacher conferences, and resources for joining or starting parent support and advocacy chapters.
National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC)
This website provides a national hub for gifted education including national standards, research information, advocay, and information in general on gifted children and how to support them. They are one of the primary publishers of research in the field of gifted education and through policy advocay help to advocate for the needs of gifted students across the country.
SENG- Seupporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted
This website provides guidance for supporting the social and emitonal needs that are unique to the gifted population inclusing such things ans asynchronous development, perfectionism, and aniety. They offer parent support and even a book club approach to help connect parents with others who have similar challenges and to help them build skills to be able to address their student's needs.
Testing Mom- CogAT Scores: Understand Test Results
This article helps break down how the Cog-AT test results are calculated and what they mean in a way that is accessible to parents, caregivers, and teachers who are not familiar with gifted education and testing in a way that is easy to understand. This can help you to read your student's score report and feel more confident that you know what all those numbers mean.
Books for Adults
(Links are to websites for purchase):
Beyond Gited Education; Designing and Implementing Advanced Academic Programs
By: Scott J. Peters, Ph.D., Michael S. Matthews Ph.D., Matthew T. McBee, Ph.D., & Betsy McCoach, Ph.D.
This book helps educators to develop and implent gifted education programming while provifing guidelines to avoid common problems. It guides teachers as to what specific things gifted children need to thrive and find success while addressing isses related to a variety of topics including idnetification and acceleration.
Differentiation for Gifted Learners; Going Beyond the Basiscs, Revised and Update Edition
By: Diane Heacox, Ed.D & Richard M. Cash, Ed.D.
This book provides steps to increase depth and complexity for gifted students in the regular classroom setting in ways that challenge them while preserving the classroom community by differnetiating the same activities for different student and/or student groups so that all students feel included and each is met where they are to maximize learning, success, and student senses of belonging and accomplishment.
Emotional Intensity in Gifted Students
By: Christine Fonseca
This book is designed to help in understanding the instensity of emotion felt by gifted children and to help provide them strategies to manage these emotions in healthy ways that will suipport lifelong success.
Growing Up Gifted; Develping Potential of Children at School and at Home
By: Barbara Clark
This book looks at gifteness from the perspective of brain funtioning and growth and tried to understand why gifted students have different potential and abilities than other students. Is it nature, nurture, or both? Are there ways we can leverage to develop gifteness in any child? How is giftedness developed and does it require outside inputs? This book seeks to address the questions and many more about who the gifted are, their devlopment, and how we can impact and support it.
Edited By: Jamie A. Castellano & Kimberly L. Chandler
This book helps educators understand the different special populations within the gifted population. It helps with adressing issues relating to identification as well as barriers that can exist because of soci-economic, cultural, or ethnic reasons.
Igniting Creativity in Gifted Learners K-6; Strategies for Every Teacher
By: Joan Franklin Smutny, S.E. von Fremd
This book provides strategies for classroom teachers to integrate opportunities for students to engage in creative thinking across all school disciplines. The book uses contributions from many teachers to provide a foundation for pK-6 teachers to help them access the creativity of all students (not just the gifted) and avoid common mistakes that can lead to an enviroment that may be accidentally unwelcoming to creative thought and product.
I'm Not Just Gifted; Social-Emotional Curriculum for Guiding Gifted Children
By: Christine Fonseca
This book is for educators in grades 4-7 to use with gifted students to help them nacigate and manage the emotional challenges of being a gifted individual. The book provides activites to help with dealing with perfectionism, faliure, friendships, and goal setting among others as well as complete lessons which include discussion questions and reproducables.
On the Social and Emotional Lives of Gifted Children
By: Tracy L. Cross, Ph.D.
This book helps to understand the social and emtotional challenges specific to gifted children including topics such as asynchrony, over-sensitivities, perfectionsim, anxiety, and rage. Gifted people typically are sensitive and have very intense emotions that can be overwhelming and this can help to build a greater understanding of their challenges and how to approach supporting their unique needs.
Social-Emotional Curriculum with Gifted and Talented Students
By: Joyce L. VanTassel-Baska, Ed.D., Tracy L. Cross, Ph.D., & F. Richard Olenchak, Ph.D.
This book helps with strategies to address the social and emotional needs of gifted students including implementation of strategies including art, music, and bibliotherapy.
Books That are Relatable or Helpful for Gifted Kids
*This book list does not include titles that are planned to be used in our classroom at any grade level
Gifted students may feel like they are different from others or don't fit in with their peers. Reading books about young people who are gifted in different ways and seeing how those characters navigate the challenges of life can help them to better understand themselves, their interactions with others, and that they are not alone in the world.
*Books are selected from Appendix A of Understanding the Social and Emotional Lives of Gifted Students, by: Thomas P. Hebert. Before selecting a book for your child, make sure to read the description on the cover or the book seller's site to determine if you belive it is appropriate for their current reading level and maturity.
Support and Brain Building Books That Gifted Kids Enjoy or can Help Them
101 Success Secrets for Gifted Kids: The Ultimate Handbook
By: Christine Fonseca
This book is written for gifted kids to help them navigate the tween years from age 8 to 12 including how to manage the expectations others have for them and those they have for themselves presented in a fun way.
Mensa for Kids, Everyday Super-Smart Mind Games; 100 Awesome Brain Teasers
By: Fred Coughlin with American Mensa
Challenging puzzle book for kids
Mensa for Kids, Fun Puzzle Challenges; Terrific Ways to Stretch your Brain!
By: Evelyn B. Christensen
Cahllenging puzzle book for kids
Novels with Relatable Cahracters
Dear Mr. Henshaw, By: Beverly Cleary
The Landry News, By: Andrew Clements
The Great Brain, By: John D. Fitzgerals
My Side of the Mountain, By: Jean Craighead George
Julie of the Wolves, By: Jean Craighead George
Philip Hall Likes Me. I Reckon Maybe, By: Bette Greene
The Gift-Giver, By: Joyce Hansen
Class Clown, By: Johanna Hurwitz
Class President, By: Johanna Hurwitz
Resources for Profoundly Gifted Students
This page includes resources for all levels of gifted students, but this sectyion highlights several resources for the specific population of highly and profoundly gifted students. These students comprise a very small number of the gifted students whom we serve, but are often those in most need of additonal support because the standard school system is not equipped to meet their needs and there is often a chasm between the abilities and interests of these children and their same age peers. A contributing factor to there being such dificulty understanding of these students is that they occur with a rarity of 1 in 10,000 or fewer.
Websites
Exceptionally and Profoundly Gifted Students: An Underserved Population
This article helps to explain some of the challenges for the most highly gifted children as well as providing definitions of the different levels of giftedness and providing context throguh anecdotes and research.
Did your student not just qualify for TAG, but has extremely high Cog-AT scores? Mensa is an organization for those in the top 5% of intelligence in the world. It your student recieved a cumulative VQN score of 132 or higher then their score will automatically qualify them for membership. Even if your student didn't score quite that high, they may have the potential to qualify through an IQ test or other test approved by Mensa. It is important, especially for young people who may feel isolated because of their intelligence, to be able to connect with other people who are of similar ability. Mensa offers social opportunities to do just that! Even if your student doesn't qualify for Mensa membership, they may enjoy the many brain games, puzzles, etc that are tested by Mensa members and bear the organizations's seal. Just search Mensa game on Amazon for a wide selection.
Exceptionally Gifted Chiildren, Characteristics and Needs
The Davidson Institute seeks to help parents understand their profoundly gifted child and recognize the typical challenges and behaviors at school and at home so that they are better prepared to support them and adovcate for this child's unique needs. They also provide programs and scholarships for highly gifted students and opportunities for taking officail practice SAT tests.
This site provides articles and support for parents of profoundly gifted students inclusing coaching opportuntieis, information about early college, issues with age discrimination, and need to know info about your student taking college enteracne exams including the SAT and ACT before the age of 13.
Raising A Profoundly Gifted Child
This is a story about one child's journey and how his mother fought for his right to an adequate education despite many barriers. It helps to understand what options there can be, what typical barriers exisit in education for the profoundly gifted, and to know that if your child is similar, you are not alone in dealing with these challenges.
The 10 Most Commonly Asked Questions About Highly Gifted Children
If your student has a score of 95% of higher on the Cog-AT they likely need more support that other gifted children. This article addresses 10 commonly asked question and can help you start to begin to understand your child and their needs.
Books
Early Enterance to College as an Option for Highly Gifted Adolecents
By: Alexander R. Pagnani
This book provides information about the option for highly gifted students to attend college earlier than their peers. It addresses what programs are avaliable, what challenges there may be and provides both history and guidance. Although your student is younger than this right now, it is important to know about what options they will have in the future and to be able to condier which may be best for them. (Highly gifted students make up only the top few percent and the need for this does not apply to most students in the TAG program).