The national curriculum inclusion statement supports flexibility in lesson planning for gifted and talented learners:

'Teachers secure pupils' motivation and concentration by planning appropriately challenging work for those whose ability and understanding are in advance of their language skills.'

It follows that teachers will need to be alert to the children and young people whose ability and understanding are in advance of their language skills. These students may, for instance, show a high level of creativity or of practical skill without necessarily backing it up with the same high level of articulation. Teachers therefore need to plan appropriately challenging work, testing a variety of different skills and talents, using a variety of teaching and learning methods to trigger the learner's best skills and potential.'

The subject-specific guidance on this website explains how teachers can balance the extension of the breadth and depth of study with faster progression to higher levels of the curriculum.

Anyone who teaches a particular subject or curriculum area, at whatever age or level, should be:

• clear about what constitutes high-level performance;
• familiar with higher-order thinking and how this manifests itself in the context of the subject;
• able to set tasks that give opportunities for higher-order thinking skills (eg tuning straight into similarities and differences between artists or texts, rather than describing in detail one and then the other).

By having an appreciation of ultimate goals, teachers are well placed to gauge the extent to which they can use an activity to support and strengthen the understanding, knowledge and skills of gifted and talented learners.

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Differentiation

Whether a group of learners covers the full range of ability or a narrower band, gifted and talented individuals will always require a differentiated response. Individually, they will be at different stages of readiness to engage with new information or concepts and, as a group, will embrace a range of learning styles and interests. Teachers should differentiate the content, learning process and outcome by using a variety of:

• ways of exploring curriculum content;
• activities or processes to enable learners to make sense of new information and ideas;
• ways for learners to demonstrate what they have learned.

Teachers need to differentiate or modify the content by lifting (or removing) the ceiling on what learners and students can learn. This enables the development of a rich, diverse and efficiently-organised knowledge base. Tasks set need to be constructed so that they give learners opportunities to:

• work in increasingly analytical ways;
• handle more complex material and ideas;
• construct their own enquiries;
• with encouragement, move into content areas that technically lie outside the curriculum as defined.

Teachers should differentiate or modify the learning process by promoting creativity and higher-order cognitive skills, and by encouraging learners to use productively the knowledge and understanding that they already have. Different learning styles can be accommodated and debriefing can be used as a mechanism for learners to articulate and reflect on their learning.

Teachers should differentiate or modify the outcome by giving the gifted and talented the opportunities to produce a product that relates to, and reflects, their potential and/or interests. Strategies for enhancing the outcome of a study include:

• resolving dilemmas;
• managing constraints;
• manipulating and reconfiguring information;
• evaluation.

Differentiation is effective when:

• teaching and learning are concept-based, with all learners exploring and applying the key concepts of a subject. The gifted and talented are then able to build on this conceptual base, expand their understanding of the key concepts and principles, and make connections with prior and subsequent learning (both within and across disciplines);
• learners are active in their learning, becoming increasingly independent in thought, planning and evaluation;
• learners experience a variety of patterns of working -- alone, in pairs and in groups. Whole-class or group teaching will be used to introduce new ideas, plan an activity and for shared learning outcomes;
• formative assessment is built into the curriculum to gauge learners' individual and group learning needs.

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Developing tasks

Strategies for developing learning tasks that benefit the gifted and talented in the differentiated classroom include moving from:

• concrete to abstract -- tasks involving more abstract materials, ideas or applications;
• simple to complex -- tasks involving greater complexity in terms of resources, research, issues and problems, skills practised and targets set;
• basic to transformational -- tasks involving greater transformation or manipulation of information, ideas, materials and applications;
• single- to multi-faceted or more divergent tasks -- where learners can make connections within or across subjects and can plan an enquiry that takes them in a range of directions;
• structured to more open-ended tasks -- where decisions, approaches and solutions are the learner's responsibility;
• less independence to greater independence in planning, designing and self-monitoring;
• small to larger steps -- where tasks require significant mental leaps in insight or application;
• quicker to slower and vice versa -- sometimes acceleration through materials and tasks will be appropriate;
• at other times learners may need more time to explore a topic in greater depth and/or breadth.

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