View Content #23890

< Go Back
TitleActivities Targeted at Gifted Learners
SourceCASLS Activity of the Week
Body

In this week's Topic of the Week article, we present several practices targeted specifically at gifted learners. Here we provide example strategies and activities for each practice. Although targeted specifically at gifted students, most of these strategies and activities will help all of your students gain proficiency in the target language.

Learner Choice:

  • In-class flips are one way to plan for learner agency and make effective use of class time.
  • Another approach is to apply the concept of player agency in game design to your instruction. Learn more about the role of choice here. More resources about game design and language teaching and learning are available on our Games2Teach website
  • Project-based learning is another approach that promotes learner agency; learn more about it here.

Extension Activities: 

  • If your main task is a Bingo mixer activity to find a student in class who likes a particular kind of food, then your extension task may be to talk with one person in the target language to find three foods you both like, and three foods you both dislike.
  • If your main task is to read Yelp reviews of food carts and plan which ones to eat at based on certain constraints (you like spicy food, you prefer organic, you only have $40 for the week), then your extension task could be to change one or more constraints (e.g. you love fried food; you have $120) and see how your choices change.  

Self-directed Exploration:

  • “Genius hour” is a concept borrowed from the corporate world; you can read language teacher’s reflections about its use herehere, and here. For more general information about genius hour in the classroom, start here.
  • You can get an overview of curriculum compacting here.

Cross-curricular Connections and Multimodal Approaches:

  • If students are learning about parts of a house, for example, consider some of these options for students to demonstrate their learning:
    • Build a model of a house in the target culture and label its different features.
    • Make a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting houses in the target culture and houses here.
    • Build a model home in Minecraft and describe it in the target language.
    • Use your smart phone to create a video tour of your or a friend’s or relative’s house, in the target language.
    • Draw a model home in the target culture and describe it.
  • Provide both written and spoken target language input, reinforced with visuals, actions, objects to manipulate, and experiences.  
Publishdate2017-10-09 02:15:01