Online Community Reflection

This week I went back to looking at the posts in the Gifted and Talented Education discussion boards on Teachers.net. I read some recent posts from teachers trying to find ideas and materials for their gifted students. I love the idea of exchanging ideas but think it is unfortunate that many teachers, including myself, lack the "budget" to provide differentiation for gifted students in the classroom. I have found something that works for me in my building - I ask other teachers to borrow things. For example, on Thursday for Valentine's Day, I taught a lesson on the human heart (I cannot justify watching movies and playing games for an entire day - I have to do something educational!). I asked around and ended up borrowing a model of the human heart from a 6th grade teacher and some stethoscopes from a 5th grade teacher. After the lesson my gifted students wanted to examine the heart model and found some challenging books in my classroom library about the human body. They worked in a small group at creating a model of the heart on paper and shared their work with the class.

I enjoy browsing the discussion board because I have found a few great ideas from reading posts. It also makes me feel better that teachers all over the country have similar struggles in their classrooms.