Gifted education is a broad group of special practices, procedures, and theories used in the education of children who have been identified as gifted or talented.
Blended learning, also known as hybrid learning, is an approach to education that combines online educational materials and opportunities for interaction online with traditional place-based classroom methods. It requires the physical presence of both teacher and student, with some elements of student control over time, place, path, or pace. While students still attend "brick-and-mortar" schools with a teacher present, face-to-face classroom practices are combined with computer-mediated activities regarding content and delivery. Blended learning is also used in professional development and training settings.
Cooperative learning is an educational approach which aims to organize classroom activities into academic and social learning experiences. There is much more to cooperative learning than merely arranging students into groups, and it has been described as "structuring positive interdependence." Students must work in groups to complete tasks collectively toward academic goals. Unlike individual learning, which can be competitive in nature, students learning cooperatively can capitalize on one another's resources and skills. Furthermore, the teacher's role changes from giving information to facilitating students' learning. Everyone succeeds when the group succeeds. Ross and Smyth (1995) describe successful cooperative learning tasks as intellectually demanding, creative, open-ended, and involve higher order thinking tasks. Cooperative learning has also been linked to increased levels of student satisfaction.
An online school teaches students entirely or primarily online or through the Internet. It has been defined as "education that uses one or more technologies to deliver instruction to students who are separated from the instructor and to support regular and substantive interaction between the students. Online education exists all around the world and is used for all levels of education. This type of learning enables the individuals to earn transferable credits, take recognized examinations, or advance to the next level of education over the Internet.
A homeroom, tutor group, form class or form is a short administrative class that occurs in primary school and secondary school. Within homeroom, administrative documents are distributed, attendance is marked, announcements are made and students are given the opportunity to plan for the day. Such classes also act as a form of Pastoral care, where teachers and administrators provide personal, social or health advice. Homerooms differ in their nature, depending on the country and the specific school.
Sheltered instruction is an approach to teaching English language learners which integrates language and content instruction. The phrase "sheltered instruction," original concept, and underlying theory of comprehensible input are all credited to Stephen Krashen.
A lesson plan is a teacher's detailed description of the course of instruction or "learning trajectory" for a lesson. A daily lesson plan is developed by a teacher to guide class learning. Details will vary depending on the preference of the teacher, subject being covered, and the needs of the students. There may be requirements mandated by the school system regarding the plan. A lesson plan is the teacher's guide for running a particular lesson, and it includes the goal, how the goal will be reached and a way of measuring how well the goal was reached.
Mastery learning is an instructional strategy and educational philosophy, first formally proposed by Benjamin Bloom in 1968. Mastery learning maintains that students must achieve a level of mastery in prerequisite knowledge before moving forward to learn subsequent information. If a student does not achieve mastery on the test, they are given additional support in learning and reviewing the information and then tested again. This cycle continues until the learner accomplishes mastery, and they may then move on to the next stage.
A literature circle is equivalent for young people of an adult book club, but with greater structure, expectation and rigor. The aim is to encourage thoughtful discussion and a love of reading in young people. The intent of literature circles is "to allow students to practice and develop the skills and strategies of good readers".
Gifted Education in public schools is mandated by Georgia law and is governed by the Georgia Board of Education (GBOE) Rule 160-4-2-.38 and GBOE-approved regulations. The GBOE Gifted Education Rule was initiated November 13, 1997, reinitiated January 8, 1998 and then adopted on February 12, 1998 in the final form.
Tracking is separating students by academic ability into groups for all subjects or certain classes and curriculum within a school. It may be referred to as streaming or phasing in some schools.
Grade skipping is a form of academic acceleration, often used for academically talented students, that enable the student to skip entirely the curriculum of one or more years of school. Grade skipping allows students to learn at an appropriate level for their cognitive abilities, and is normally seen in schools that group students primarily according to their chronological age, rather than by their individual developmental levels. Grade skipping is usually done when a student is sufficiently advanced in all school subjects, so that they can move forward in all subjects or graduate, rather than in only one or two areas. There are alternatives to grade skipping.
The jigsaw technique is a method of organizing classroom activity that makes students dependent on each other to succeed. It breaks classes into groups that each assemble a piece of an assignment and synthesize their work when finished. It was designed by social psychologist Elliot Aronson to help weaken racial cliques in forcibly integrated schools. A study by John Hattie found that the jigsaw method benefits students' learning.
Student-directed teaching is a teaching technology that aims to give the student greater control, ownership, and accountability over his or her own education. Developed to counter institutionalized, mass, schooling, student-directed teaching allows students to make their own choices while they learn in order to make education much more meaningful, relevant, and effective.
Cluster grouping is an educational process in which four to six gifted and talented (GT) or high-achieving students or both are assigned to an otherwise heterogeneous classroom within their grade to be instructed by a teacher who has had specialized training in differentiating for gifted learners. Clustering can be contrasted with other ability-grouping strategies in which high achievers fill their own dedicated class, entirely separate from other students.
Gifted pull-outs are an educational approach in which gifted students are removed from a heterogeneous (mixed-ability) classroom to spend a portion of their time with academic peers. Pull-outs tend to meet one to two hours per week. The students meet with a teacher to engage in enrichment or extension activities that may or may not be related to the curriculum being taught in the regular classroom. Pull-out teachers in some states are not required to have any formal background in gifted education.
Differentiated instruction and assessment, also known as differentiated learning or, in education, simply, differentiation, is a framework or philosophy for effective teaching that involves providing all students within their diverse classroom community of learners a range of different avenues for understanding new information in terms of: acquiring content; processing, constructing, or making sense of ideas; and developing teaching materials and assessment measures so that all students within a classroom can learn effectively, regardless of differences in their ability. Differentiated instruction, according to Carol Ann Tomlinson, is the process of "ensuring that what a student learns, how he or she learns it, and how the student demonstrates what he or she has learned is a match for that student's readiness level, interests, and preferred mode of learning." According to Boelens et al. (2018), differentiation can be on two different levels: the administration level and the classroom level. The administration level takes the socioeconomic status and gender of students into consideration. At the classroom level, differentiation revolves around content, processing, product, and effects. On the content level, teachers adapt what they are teaching to meet the needs of students. This can mean making content more challenging or simplified for students based on their levels. The process of learning can be differentiated as well. Teachers may choose to teach individually at a time, assign problems to small groups, partners or the whole group depending on the needs of the students. By differentiating product, teachers decide how students will present what they have learnt. This may take the form of videos, graphic organizers, photo presentations, writing, and oral presentations. All these take place in a safe classroom environment where students feel respected and valued—effects.
Student teams-achievement divisions (STAD) is a Cooperative learning strategy in which small groups of learners with different levels of ability work together to accomplish a shared learning goal. It was devised by Robert Slavin and his associates at Johns Hopkins University.
The gradual release of responsibility (GRR) model is a particular style of teaching which is a structured method of pedagogy framed around a process devolving responsibility within the learning process from the teacher to the eventual independence of the learner. This instructional model requires that the teacher, by design, transitions from assuming "all the responsibility for performing a task...to a situation in which the students assume all of the responsibility". The ideal result is a confident learner who accepts responsibility for their own learning and directs this learning through the cognitive processes involved, moving through the academic spectrum, to independent choice. As Buehl (2005) stated, the GRR model "emphasizes instruction that mentors students into becoming capable thinkers and learners when handling the tasks with which they have not yet developed expertise".
School organizational models are methods of structuring the curriculum, functions, and facilities for schools, colleges, and universities. The organizing of teaching and learning has been structured since the first educational institutions were established. With greater specialization and expertise in a particular field of knowledge, and a gathering of like-minded individuals, instructors clustered into specialized groups, schools, and eventually departments within larger institutions. This structure spread rapidly during the 19th and 20th centuries with factory model schools and their "assembly-line" method of standardized curriculum and instructional methods. Beginning with the progressive educational movement in the early-mid 20th century, and again with similar trends in the late 20th and early 21st century, alternative models structured towards deeper learning, higher retention, and 21st century skills developed. The organizational models of schools fall into several main categories, including: departmental, integrative, project-based, academy, small learning communities, and school-within-a-school.
