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How the Gifted Brain Learns
"Pulls many areas of gifted research, knowledge, and applications together in a clear and concise manner. This is a one-stop book for teachers who have high-ability/gifted students in a classroom and need to understand how these students′ brains work and how to plan effective instruction."—Mary Beth Cary, TeacherWorth County Primary School, Sylvester GA
Identify, understand, and engage the full range of gifted learners with practical, brain-compatible classroom strategies!
What does it mean to be gifted and talented? The second edition of David Sousa′s best-selling How the Gifted Brain Learns helps bring clarity to this topic, leveraging the latest neuroscientific findings to separate fact from fiction and provide teachers with practical strategies for engaging artistically and intellectually advanced learners.
This reader-friendly guide gives elementary and secondary teachers the help they need to not only recognize and challenge their gifted learners, but also to support gifted students who underachieve. Acknowledging that students are often gifted in specific subject areas, the text includes chapters dedicated to talents in language, math, and the arts. Special "From the Desk of a Teacher" sections offer classroom-tested examples of the instructional applications suggested by research. In addition to featuring new research and expanded curriculum ideas, this second edition helps answer questions
How the brains of gifted students are differentHow to gauge if gifted students are being adequately challenged How to identify students who are both gifted and learning disabledHow improving programs for the gifted and talented benefits other studentsHow to better identify gifted minority students, who are often underrepresented in gifted programsThis resource is a one-stop shop of brain-compatible strategies for teaching the full range of gifted students!
Identify, understand, and engage the full range of gifted learners with practical, brain-compatible classroom strategies!
What does it mean to be gifted and talented? The second edition of David Sousa′s best-selling How the Gifted Brain Learns helps bring clarity to this topic, leveraging the latest neuroscientific findings to separate fact from fiction and provide teachers with practical strategies for engaging artistically and intellectually advanced learners.
This reader-friendly guide gives elementary and secondary teachers the help they need to not only recognize and challenge their gifted learners, but also to support gifted students who underachieve. Acknowledging that students are often gifted in specific subject areas, the text includes chapters dedicated to talents in language, math, and the arts. Special "From the Desk of a Teacher" sections offer classroom-tested examples of the instructional applications suggested by research. In addition to featuring new research and expanded curriculum ideas, this second edition helps answer questions
How the brains of gifted students are differentHow to gauge if gifted students are being adequately challenged How to identify students who are both gifted and learning disabledHow improving programs for the gifted and talented benefits other studentsHow to better identify gifted minority students, who are often underrepresented in gifted programsThis resource is a one-stop shop of brain-compatible strategies for teaching the full range of gifted students!
294 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 11, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
June 17, 2011
Ready for the conference, though I'm interested in all brains, not just gifted.
June 8, 2023
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.
April 7, 2018
No thank you. Glad it's over
November 21, 2011
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.
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.
January 11, 2015
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.
Even better is all of the application ideas. I will be consulting that beginning immediately for my gifted seminar class.
July 21, 2012
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.
June 5, 2015
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.
July 30, 2011
Very instructive for reaching those people who 'think differently'.
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August 9, 2011The techniques which are effective for gifted learners are good for all students.
Read
March 3, 2012I 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...
August 9, 2009
Reading this for a summer class...not a light read, but interesting for teachers.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews