[HPFGU-OTChatter] re: Sherry waiting line, Shaun teaching literacy, TONKS, KREACHUR

[Shaun Hately]

On 24 Jul 2005 at 4:14, Catlady (Rita Prince Winston) wrote:

> SHAUN, how can being a literacy teacher help you be assigned to the
> exceptionally gifted students? Aren't the exceptionally gifted
> students the ones who've already taught themselves to read and have
> read everything in the local library?

That's not at all uncommon, but it's by no means universal. While 
most gifted children do read a lot, it's possible for a gifted child 
to be a reluctant reader, and it's also possible for a child to be 
gifted and learning disabled at the same time, and depending on the 
disability, that can impact their reading. Most teachers aren't 
trained to deal with these issues.

Even if you've got gifted kids though who have taught themselves to 
read, and who are reading considerably above what is normal for their 
age level, that can introduce all sorts of educational problems - 
what do you give a six year old who is technically speaking reading 
at a ninth grade level? Would you give her the same books that ninth 
graders read? Just because the child has the ability to read at that 
level, doesn't mean all the books written at that level are going to 
be suitable for them emotionally (some gifted kids are also advanced 
emotionally, many are not). In these cases, literacy teachers coming 
from a gifted perspective have a great deal to do.

I was a profoundly gifted child myself, and I taught myself to read 
when I was about eighteen months old. I was reading novels at age two 
- only things like Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree books, nothing 
particularly sophisticated, but that's the type of thing I was 
reading. By the time I got to school at five, I was already reading 
at the level of a high school student. My teachers were utterly 
unequipped for that - they expected me to read the same books every 
other child in the class was reading. It was not an easy thing to 
deal with. The teachers simply weren't equipped to deal with a child 
like me. Even when I got teachers who were used to extending kids, 
they were used to giving them books two years above age level - not 
eight. I have vivid memories of my Grade 1 teacher - a nun - turning 
purple and pink - when I asked her what 'masturbate' meant - she'd 
given me the Chocolate War to read, not knowing anything about its 
content except that it was set at a Catholic school.

Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately | www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       | drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one
thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the 
facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be 
uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that 
need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil
Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia