Kenneth J. Smith

Challenging Units for Gifted Learners: Teaching the Way Gifted Students Think (Language Arts, Grades 6-8) Kenneth J. Smith

Gifted students have the potential to learn material earlier and faster, to handle more complexity and abstraction, and to solve complex problems better. This potential, however, needs stimulating experiences from home and school or it will not unfold. These books are designed to help teachers provide the stimulating curricula that will nurture this potential in school. The units presented in this series are based on research into how these students actually think differently from their peers and how they use their learning styles and potential not merely to develop intellectual expertise, but to move beyond expertise to the production of new ideas.

The Language Arts book includes units that ask students to develop strong personalities for their main characters while writing mysteries, study Freud's psychoanalytic theory and then analyze a classic novel using what they've learned, focus on writing from a specific point of view, and increase their appreciation for poetry by studying famous poets.