Allowing Students to Learn at a Faster Pace

The author makes the statement "gifted students should be allowed to move through it at a faster pace than the rest of the class." Do you believe this to be true for most highly intelligent & gifted students? If so, what percentage of students do you believe are allowed the opportunity to learn at their own pace and continue learning in America? And what do you feel about this?

School Reform

Here is an interest link about school reform:
http://blip.tv/file/88216

James

On page 41, the author discusses a scenario with James. James was a great kid who didn't make any trouble at school, but his parents were going to pull him out to home school him because he was not getting what they felt he needed at school. Come to find out, James started his "real work" once he got home. He was writing a textbook about Human Anatomy and Physiology. The teacher compacted his curriculum and allowed for him to work on his "real work" at school. Can you see this working in your classroom? Do you think you have any kids that would qualify or benefit from this type of compacting?

Article

I came across this article and was hoping that you would read it and post what you think. I am not going to say anything either way until after a few posts to see what your opinion is without knowing what I think. http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3705/professor-encourages-students-to-pass-notes-during-class-via-twitter

Thanks!

Spelling/Vocabulary

I know that we don't concentrate on spelling at the middle level as much as in elementary, but I thought I would share how my 9 year old's teacher does their spelling. At the beginning of the year, the students take a pre-test on all of the words that they need to know by the end of the year. Then the students only test on the words that they missed on the pretest each week. When they finish their words for the year, then they get to pick their spelling words. For example, my daughter is choosing Greek vocabulary words and books of the Bible. She LOVES it!

So...for those of you who use key vocabulary terms, is this something you can incorporate? I don't know how it is done...so I am just throwing it out there.

AIMS & gifted

Given the fact that we are right in the middle of testing, I thought that this topic was appropriate! On page 32 the book states that "there are probably students in your class right now who could have taken any end of the year standardized test at the start of the year and scored at or above 95th percentile"

So.....
1. Do you agree with that statement, why or why not?
2. If you agree, what do you do with those kiddos that rightfully know the existing material (gifted or not)?
3. If you don't agree, would you be willing to test your students to find out if this statement is true?

Already Knowing the Information

On page one, the auther tells about a teacher who was happy when all of her top reading group got 'A''s on the end-of-unit-test. She realized that they may have already known the information before she was teaching it. So she decided to give the end of the chapter test prior to teaching the chapter and found that they all got 'A''s again.

We have all been there--bored to death in a class or a professional development and we already know the information being covered. How do we help these kiddos that come to class knowing the information. 1. How do we discover that they know it? 2. What do we do when they do know it? 3. How are we going to challenge them even further? and 4. What if they have holes in their learning, but they know most of it?