Gifted &Talented: Recognizing Your Gifted Student
By Mimi Rothschild Just as there are many students in traditional schools that are gifted, there are many children who are being homeschooled who are gifted as well. Recognizing if your child is gifted and teaching that child are important skills that every homeschooling parent should learn. Indeed, homeschooling provides the gifted child with numerous opportunities and methods to fully realize her talents. Homeschooling also allows parents to make sure that their child's intellectual gifts are recognized and that their child's skills are being utilized and developed to their fullest extent.
You may suspect that your homeschooled child is gifted. There are objective, quantifiable ways to see if your child is truly gifted. As a parent-teacher of a homeschooled child, it is difficult but very important, that you set aside pre-conceived notions about how smart, talented and/or generally wonderful your child is to get to the heart of the matter. This is important so that your child gets the maximum benefit, whatever her intelligence is. The first step is to evaluate how your child did in traditional school in terms of grades. If your child has never been in a traditional school, you may want to take an honest look at how rapidly and how well your child absorbs and utilizes the information presented to her.
As a parent teacher of a homeschooled child, you can also have your child evaluated independently by your local school board. Depending upon where you live, there will be several tests, including a traditional IQ test, a critical thinking test, and perhaps interviews with teachers and/or psychologists. For a homeschooled student you suspect may be gifted in English or language arts, other methods of evaluation may be used. You can measure how well the student speaks, how well the student can elaborate and explain concepts, if the student can synthesize new vocabulary words and pieces of information, etc. Again, as a homeschooling parent, the resources of your school district in evaluating possibly gifted students are at your disposal.
Gifted homeschooled kids are truly fortunate because their learning environment allows them to move faster in the areas where they are gifted and more slowly in areas where they may be academically average. As the parent of a homeschooled child, you can ensure that the curriculum and learning environment are attenuated to their wants and needs as gifted students. The gifted homeschooled child gets a custom education that fits her perfectly.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mimi Rothschild is a homeschooling mother, writer, children's rights advocate, and Founder and C.E.O. of home education company Learning by Grace, Inc. She and her husband of 28 years reside with their 8 children right outside Philadelphia, PA.
Rothschild launched Learning By Grace, Inc. because she believed that our nation's public school system has failed parents and students. Learning By Grace, Inc. offers online education through a multimedia-rich curriculum to PreK-12 children across the country and throughout the world.
An accomplished author, Rothschild has written books regarding education published by McGraw Hill and others. Her Homeschooling News Café Blog consists of the most current and relevant education news.Electronic reproduction of this article is permitted if content is published unchanged, appropriate credit is given, and the article title links to corresponding article webpage.
