NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR GIFTED CHILDREN CONFERENCE 2022
SESSION NOTES FROM PRESENTATIONS ATTENDEd
Bringing it All Together in STEM and TechnologyJoin the Computers and Technology and STEM Networks to explore STEM and technology tasks that bring together these critical areas of investigation in today’s world. From upcycling plastic bags to seeing the world through virtual and augmented reality, we will have a variety of tasks for you to explore and ideas for you to bring back to your students.
A Meaningful Mess: Cultivating Creativity Through Passion-based Learning |
Short description: Passion-based learning can be messy, but extremely meaningful. When gifted learners are given the opportunity to pursue their passions, they are given the opportunity to experience new learning, learn at their own pace, and practice life-ready skills in an authentic way. Learn how a simple framework will allow you to make passion-based learning a priority in your own classroom.
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
- Understand and be able to implement the 6 Ps of Genius Hour
- Realize the impact that passion-based learning can have on gifted learners and recognize why it should be a part of their programming
- Consider how passion-based learning affects the apathetic and disengaged gifted learners on their own campuses or within their own districts
Fostering Social-emotional Skills in STEM Curriculum with Picture Books
Short description: Fostering Social-emotional (SEL) skills in STEM programs is vital for the success of all gifted students, starting in the earliest elementary grades. This session shows how to use picture books as the foundation for lessons that integrate such SEL skills as creative problem-solving, decision-making, communication, task initiation, and persistence into STEM lessons. Session includes differentiated lesson plans and book lists.
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
- Learn to create an SEL curriculum for grades K-3
- Explore ways to integrate SEL and STEM curriculum content
- Learn to integrate picture books in cross-curricular STEM/SEL courses
Connecting Gifted Students to STEM: Using Real-world Problems to Inspire
Short description: Engaging students in STEM topics is paramount for the U.S. to recruit talent in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in the future. Real-world scenarios and problem-based learning (PBL) units connected to STEM topics offer gifted students opportunities to design solutions, consider complex ideas, and build critical and creative thinking skills. Learn specific ways to use the 5E inquiry process to develop interdisciplinary thinking.
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
- Connect PBL activities to teach gifted learners
- Discuss how E-Ignite's PBL curriculum connects to the 5E Inquiry Process and the Next Generation Science Standards
- Adapt activities from STEM-focused PBL units for individual contexts, students, and classes
After the Limelight: Ensuring Implementation After Training for Teachers of Diverse Gifted
Short description: After exciting professional learning, teachers often face the issues of maintaining momentum and implementation. This is even more difficult in diverse, marginalized communities where daily demands take precedence over underserved gifted students, and concerns for equity and excellence seem lofty goals. Learn how to facilitate continued sustainability, engagement, and accountability stemming from over six years of research in twelve Title I schools.
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
- Learn strategies to ensure the continued implementation of professional training about principles, goals, activities, and curriculum relevant for diverse gifted learners
- Explore ways to motivate, engage, and support teachers of diverse gifted students as they implement best practices
- Learn to generate creativity in thinking, curriculum design, collaborative teaching, and lesson study, and create unique enrichment programs to further continued identification, talent development, and differentiated curriculum for diverse gifted students
USING SCRATCH ASSESSMENT TOOLS TO IDENTIFY STUDENTS WHO ARE GIFTED IN COMPUTER PROGRAMMING
Short description: Have you integrated the Scratch programming language into your curriculum and wondered how to use it to identify gifted students? Presenters discuss ways to assess Scratch projects, share resources such as rubrics and assessment tools, and demonstrate how to use them in gifted identification using projects developed by students participating in a federally-funded research project.
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
- Review various Scratch assessment tools
- Learn how to use these tools to identify students who are gifted in computer programming
Building a Plane While Flying It: A Guide to Prepare and Support New Gifted Coordinators
Short Description: Are you a newcomer to the gifted coordinator world? Do you want to feel prepared and supported in a gifted coordinator position and network with others? Compiling and utilizing resources, plans, and research can be challenging. During this interactive session, participants gather information by sharing experiences and networking with one another.
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
- Gain tools for collaboration with families, other educators, related service providers, individuals with gifts and talents, and personnel from community agencies to address the needs of gifted individuals
- Use their knowledge of general and specialized curricula to improve programs, supports, and services at classroom, school, community, and system levels
- Discuss foundational knowledge of the field to inform gifted education practice, to engage in lifelong learning, and to advance the profession
But Mommy, I Want to Be a Plumber: Critical Issues in Career and Vocational Development
Short description: This session unveils and addresses critical issues relating to the career and vocational development of gifted students. Aligning with NAGC's effort to make “equity and serving diverse students a priority,” this presentation explores the research, equity, and biases related to career and vocational development and programs for gifted students. The agrarian and vocational culture of Indiana makes this presentation particularly relevant.
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
- Gain needed awareness of the inequities in serving an underserved population of gifted students (i.e., students who have non-traditional gifted interests such as desires for vocations in the trades or what is viewed as blue collar or other non-traditional gifted careers)
- Learn to address the biases and inequities in gifted education against vocational education and training fields that do not align with typical gifted programs or curricula
- Learn to better evaluate the equity of the programs they provide and not just better equity of the admissions to the programs provided
- Consider expanding program offerings for other non-traditional gifted career and vocational fields, which, in turn, eliminates bias as it currently exists
Leaders Who Make a Difference: Expanding Your Influence in Gifted Education
Short description: Most gifted coordinators are not trained in leadership, yet their positions demand significant ability to influence others. This session presents research-based leadership principles viewed through a gifted education lens. It seeks to help attendees in their development of a compelling vision, powerful relationships, and necessary character as essential for gifted education leadership in schools.
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
- Write the vision they espouse for the gifted program they lead
- Identify a personal action for improvement in communication and cooperation
- Explain their personal guiding values for the gifted program they serve
Inquiry-based Activities to Foster Global Citizenship
Short description: Discover hands-on activities to help students think critically and creatively about global challenges and human well-being, and consider their roles as global citizens. Engage in activities that build skills in social studies, science, and mathematics while introducing concepts of sustainability, resource use, and living conditions around the globe.
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
- Create and implement interdisciplinary, inquiry-based lesson plans around themes of environmental sustainability and justice that can be used by educators of different disciplines
- Build knowledge and skills in the social sciences while applying learning to authentic problems
- Differentiate the presented lessons for different kinds of learners
Snorkelers and Scuba Divers: a New Perspective on Differentiation for Gifted Learners
Short description: Differentiating for gifted learners is not always as difficult as it may seem. Designing for depth allows us to design every learning experience with the gifted learner in mind. In this learning experience, I share how we can design for both our snorkelers and scuba divers while allowing every learner to experience the ocean.
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
- Learn and understand the four essential questions to ask when designing a meaningful learning experience
- Realize that designing for depth will benefit all learners while providing gifted learners with what they need and deserve from a learning experience
- Learn to utilize the depth and complexity icons, along with additional tools and strategies, to design meaningful learning experiences that will engage and empower today's gifted learner
Digital Storytelling: Communicating in the 21st Century
Short description: If you’re searching for a way to engage and motivate gifted students in the writing process to provide challenge, encourage creativity, and provide multiple pathways for expression, look no further! Digital storytelling may be just the thing you’re looking for to provide an alternative to traditional writing formats and encourage meaningful technology integration in the classroom.
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
- Learn about the components of a digital story and how its use in the classroom supports challenge and motivation for GT learners
- Learn how a digital story is created and strategies for ensuring student success in creating one
- Learn about web tools and resources that support the creation of a digital story
Unplug the Code: Talent Development in Early Grades Through Computer Science
Short description: Project STEM+C2 uses innovative learning in STEM to cultivate talent in young students. This session shares computer science activities that are meaningful to young, talented students, and that can be used to develop STEM potential. Presenters share engaging activities that cultivate computational thinking and problem solving skills.
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
- Be able to implement the presented activities in elementary classrooms
- Gain an understanding of how computer science activities can be used to develop talent in young gifted students
- Understand how computer science can be used to promote creativity, problem solving, innovation, decision making, communication, and critical thinking
Finding Your Flow: Fostering Creativity Through Maker Spaces and Loose Parts Play
Short description: Because gifted learners need appropriate academic challenge in a world seeking innovators, entrepreneurs, and out-of-the-box thinkers, educators may want to look to the principles of play. This session shares the impact of open-ended "loose parts" play and the intersection of the playwork mindset, maker culture, and best practices in gifted education at a diverse SEM-inspired public magnet school.
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
- Learn strategies to integrate more student-led, open-ended experiences into the classroom
- Learn how more open-ended, playwork-inspired experiences remove the "ceiling" of teacher-directed activities, allowing gifted learners to pursue deeper, more personalized learning
- Learn the social-emotional benefits of open-ended exploration and play
Breaking the Magician’s Code: A Guide to Creatively Teaching the Gifted
Short description: Teaching the gifted is a magical experience, and we know that magicians have more than a few tricks up their sleeves. In this session, we pull back the curtain and reveal the secrets behind the art of creatively teaching in a gifted classroom by demonstrating how to meaningfully integrate creativity into your lessons and bring excitement to your teaching.
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
- Learn techniques for employing artistic modification to encourage and embrace their own creativity through the art of teaching
- Explore strategies for creatively engaging students, developing the skills of flexibility, constructing meaningful connections with students, and harnessing the power of reflection
- Incorporate creativity theory and research into the art of teaching to design lessons and learning experiences to increase creative productive giftedness
Extending Socratic Seminars into Service Learning for Gifted Learners
Short description: Socratic Seminar is a hallmark inquiry-based pedagogy traditionally used to stimulate interest, abstract thinking, and critical engagement in gifted learners. This session presents a model for reorienting the original tenets of Socratic Seminar through a social justice and global awareness lens. Socratic Seminar in the classroom becomes the catalyst for Service Learning, community action, and wisdom-based thinking in the world.
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
- Understand how justice-oriented Socratic Seminars with Service Learning extensions promote civic responsibility, social action, and wisdom-based thinking in gifted learners
- Explore how to create learning experiences in their own classrooms that extend justice-oriented Socratic Seminars into authentic Service Learning projects that uncover and foster wisdom-based thinking
- Broaden their conception of giftedness to include learners that display high levels of empathy, compassion, and global awareness both in and out of the classroom
Speed Geeking
Short description: Come get your geek on with the Computers & Technology Network! Speed Geeking, a perennial favorite among techie-minded NAGC conference-goers, is a lively morning in which members of the network pitch their favorite technology tools and strategies in rapid succession. Oohs and aahs from the crowd are encouraged, and walk-on geeks are welcome! Novice or experienced users of educational technology walk away with at least one new idea, courtesy of your geeky colleagues from the Computers & Technology Network.
Closing General Session: The Power of Resilience: From 12 Foster Homes to Harvard University
Rodney Walker is an author, entrepreneur, and inspirational speaker. He faced numerous obstacles as a foster child and had extreme difficulty in school. But Mr. Walker found his way with determination and help from others. Hear how he fought his way to a bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College and graduate degrees from Harvard and Yale University.