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Partly for these reasons, students who are gifted or talented have sometimes been regarded as the responsibility of special education, along with students with other sorts of disabilities. A kindergarten child who is precociously advanced in reading, for example, may make little further progress at reading if her teachers do not recognize and develop her skill her talent may effectively disappear from view as her peers gradually catch up to her initial level. Without accommodation to their unusual level of skill or knowledge, students who are gifted or talented can become bored by school, and eventually the boredom can even turn into behavior problems. Ironically, in spite of their obvious strengths as learners, such students often languish in school unless teachers can provide them with more than the challenges of the usual curriculum. They also come from all economic and cultural groups. They hold themselves to higher than usual standards of achievement.Ĭontrary to a common impression, students who are gifted or talented are not necessarily awkward socially, less healthy, or narrow in their interests-in fact, quite the contrary (Steiner & Carr, 2003).They are very motivated, especially on tasks that are challenging or difficult.They often have well-developed vocabulary, as well as advanced reading and writing skills.They learn more quickly and independently than most students their own age.What are students who are gifted and talented like? Generally they show some combination of the following qualities: To indicate the change, educators often use the dual term gifted and talented. More recently, however, the meaning of gifted has broadened to include unusual talents in a range of activities, such as music, creative writing, or the arts (G. Their skills were demonstrated especially well, for example, on standardized tests of general ability or of school achievement. Traditionally, the term gifted referred only to students with unusually high verbal skills. The idea of multiple intelligences leads to new ways of thinking about students who have special gifts and talents.
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