Last night I had a nice working session with TAG advocates and parents from the Salem Keizer School District at the Willamette ESD in Salem, Oregon. We worked to develop different ways to integrate the Deep and Complex Look Books into their curriculum. The teachers were TAG advocates from the district who were beginning to use the Icons of Depth and Complexity in their work. In addition to the faculty, some counselors worked on ways to use the Deep and Complex Look at Me Books with parents and students.
After the teacher session, I met with parents for a session titled: Reading to and with your gifted child: Ideas for enriching the conversations that you have with your child about the stories and books that they read. We worked on specific ways to use the Icon Literature Game with their kids. It was a nice opportunity to watch the parents practice asking their children questions that helped them increase the depth and complexity of their understanding of a piece of literature. It reminded me of how important it is to give parents resources and materials that support these kinds of conversations. At the end of the day it can be a challenge to summon the mental energy that’s required to ask your gifted child deep and complex questions about literature.
Thanks to Ricki Myers and the rest of the TAG Team in Salem Keizer for inviting me to meet with them. They have been doing some effective work with their teachers with an eye on developing sustainable practices for their district. In addition to the ongoing teacher training, they are doing some thoughtful work on identifying students using the Kingore Observation Inventory (KOI), and supporting parents with regular parent meetings. Hopefully we and the Pacific University Center for Gifted Education, can continue to support their work in the future.
mark s.
Paula and want to thank all the folks in Texas for their hospitality, support, and constructive feedback during our presentations. It was also an opportunity to learn about how the state of Texas supports gifted children and teacher training for the gifted. Texas requires all new teachers to have 30 hours of training in gifted and talented education if they have a child identified as gifted in their classroom. In addition, all new teachers must have six additional hours of training every year to stay current. Teachers who attended our sessions at the Texas TAG Conference could use those hours toward their ongoing professional development. After each of our sessions, we had to hold up a card with a secret code on it the teachers wrote down to submit as evidence they attended our presentation, thus satisfying one hour toward their professional development.
A few of the books we mentioned in our presentations you can find under things we like to read category to the left.
Were able to introduce the Icon Game created by Paula and Karren Timmermans. The game allows kids to explore the depth and complexity of a piece of literature using the Icons in a game format.
Icon Game spinner and and example of a patterns card
It will be available to buy on the J Taylor Publishing site next week.
Leave us a comment or send us an email if you want to share any thoughts or cool, clever, creative ways you are infusing the Icons of Depth and Complexity into your kids lives.
mark s.
We’re off to Texas to present at the Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented Conference in Houston. In their words: “The TAGT Annual Professional Development Conference is your premier opportunity to learn how to meet the unique needs of the gifted and talented children in your life, and to connect with thousands of your peers.” We will be presenting twice at the conference. On Dec 3rd we will giving a presentation titled Amplified and Misunderstood: Positive Gifted Identity Development. During this presentation we will talk about what it means to be a child who is gifted and leads an amplified life. In addition, we will present our Positive Gifted Identity Development model which accounts for the factors that lead to this way of being and identifys Habits of Mind children can learn to help them in develop a positive identity. We will be presenting on December 4th as well. The title of that presentation is: Encouraging Kids to THiNK in Deep and Complex Ways. During this presentation we will be talking about different ways to use the Deep and Complex Look Books that will help kids take a deep and complex look at the world.
Houston here we come!
mark s.