"Gifted and Challenging"

After reading the "Gifted and Challenging" article (Kostelnick, 2002), I started thinking about the students in my placement classroom. There are more than a handful of "challenging" students among my first graders, but the article has caused me to look closer, looking for the possibilities of gifted and talented students among the challenging ones.

Some of my students who tend to be "off task" a lot of the time may in fact just be bored with the work they are doing. I know that a lot of them are struggling with the classwork, some more than others, but I never thought to think that their "problems" may not be just behavioral but educational--I need to start paying closer attention to these students to get a better look at what really is happening.

I think an important lesson I took from this article was that (as we've heard many times before) students learn in different ways with different needs. As teachers, it's vital that we are sensitive to these differences so that all students can achieve to the best of their abilities.