How the Gifted Brain Learns by Corwin

by David A. Sousa

Now from the author of the best-selling How the Brain Learns and How the Special Needs Brain Learns comes a new book dealing with gifted and talented students. How the Gifted Brain Learns helps you turn research on the brain function of intellectually and artistically advanced students into practical classroom activities and strategies.David Sousa shows how the brain processes information and offers both simple and complex strategies that will help identify and challenge gifted students in your classroom. Building on the latest discoveries in neuroscience, learning, and the nature of intelligence, this book examines why traditional talent-identification techniques are inadequate (and often inaccurate), and presents methods that will allow you to identify giftedness and talent potential with greater accuracy than ever before.This book will help answer such questions How are the brains of gifted students different? What kinds of strategies are particularly effective for students with particular gifts? What can be done to adequately challenge gifted students in our schools? What can we do to identify and help gifted students who are underachievers? How can we identify and help students who are both gifted and learning disabled? Schools have a responsibility to provide for the needs of gifted and talented students—to challenge them so that they may reach their fullest potentials. Offering real strategies for real classrooms, How the Gifted Brain Learns is an indispensable tool for all educators—school administrators, teachers, staff developers, preservice students, and even parents who want to better understand their gifted children, and help them reach exceptional levels of performance. About the David A. Sousa, Ed.D., an international educational consultant, has conducted workshops in hundreds of school districts on brain research and science education at the elementary, secondary, and university levels. He frequently presents at national conventions of educational organizations and serves as a consultant to regional and local school districts across the United States, Canada, and Europe.See David A. Sousa's How the Brain Learns, The 4-Book Collection

Genres: Education, Psychology, Teaching, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published October 11, 2002

Reviews

[Brandon O'Neill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ready for the conference, though I'm interested in all brains, not just gifted.

[Lindsey · Rating 2 out of 5]

More geared toward classroom management so it wasn't quite what I was expecting. Plus, it's rather old as far as science writing goes. I was hoping to learn something at least from it but most of the actual scientific explanations were things I had already read.

[HaleyT · Rating 1 out of 5]

No thank you. Glad it's over

[Tanya · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book read like a manual and therefore was less engaging to me than other books on this topic. It may be a style that others would prefer though. I did feel that this was more suited to classroom teachers, educational specialists and administrators than parents. This is a very research based book and may be worth looking at a second time for me - presently I'm more interested and focused on the emotional and social aspects than straightforward neurocience of how the gifted brain works.

New information for me:
Complexity and difficulty are not the same. Compolexity establishes the level of thought while difficulty determines the amount of effort within each levels. Bloom's taxonomy of complexity from top to bottom is remembering, understnading, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. Often teachers increase difficulty rather than complesxity, when the complexity would be more desirable to engage the gifted student.

Crative thinking through open-ended questions because they stimulate further inquiry, ask for clarification, probe for assumptions, search for erasons and evidence and look for implications and consequences. Examples of these types of questions include:
1) What would you have done? Why did you think this is the best choice?
2) Could this ever really happen? What might happen next?
3) What do you think might happen if ...? What do you think caused this?
4) Is what you are saying now consistent with what you said before?
5) How is it different from ...? Can you give an example?
6) Where do we go next? Where could we go for help on this?
7) What do you mean by that expression?
8) Can we trust the source of this material?
9) In what other ways could this be done? How can you test this theory?
10) What might be the consequences of behaving like that?
11) Do you agree withthis author/speaker? Why or why not?
12) How could you modify this? How would changing the sequence affect the outcome?

good spinner on p 77 to use as a tool to promot creative questioning.

[Valerie Zink · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me 5 stars means I would read it again and it is true here.The book has excellent review of gifted information I already knew (I have been teaching gifted for 14 years) and some great information that is more recent and/or I did not know.

Even better is all of the application ideas. I will be consulting that beginning immediately for my gifted seminar class.

[Briana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid overview of relatively recent research on gifted learners. Exposed me to a few things I hadn't heard before -- which given 6 years teaching gifted & multiple PD's on it -- was an impressive feat.

[Emna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting book as this is the first one that provides insight about giftedness from neuroscience perspective. It is primarily written for teachers and provides good tips about the optimal educational setting for gifted students.

[K Kenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very instructive for reaching those people who 'think differently'.

[Andy Mitchell]

The techniques which are effective for gifted learners are good for all students.

[Debbie]

I am a total nerd for this stuff, so yes, I loved it! Textbook style and all...Absolutely a gold mine for teachers and parents who want to be given exact ideas about what to do...

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this for a summer class...not a light read, but interesting for teachers.