ATTENTION RESEARCH UPDATE. Those of you interested in Dr. David Rabiner's research summaries on issues of AD/HD which might affect your high-ability child, be advised that the latest edition of "Attention Research Update" is online here. The topic of the month: The impact of working memory training and medication treatment on working memory in children with ADHD. (Whew -- long title.)
NAGC OFFERS A DEAL. Webinars on Wednesdays, an offering from the National Association for Gifted Children (that's right -- about your kid), has initiated a series of professional development events allowing attendees to listen, view slides and handouts, and question presenters. Parents are included in the intended audience, and for the rest of this year the webinars are free. Find the topics and the details.
FROM THE DAVIDSON INSTITUTE. You may now meet this year's Davidson Fellows at the DITD website. Be awed (unless you're their parents, of course). Find out more about the Davidson Institute here.
MORE STUFF as the days pass from M to T to W etc...
SMART CHILD LEFT BEHIND is the title of an opinion piece in The New York Times this past Thursday. The piece disputes what it calls an optimistic notion that NCLB is raising test scores for top students as well as low-achieving students. It points out the disparity in the gains between the two groups, and provides three reasons why gifted students are not benefiting as much. Find the article.
KIDS LEARN ABOUT LEARNING DIFFERENCES -- their own. According to an Edutopia article, a charter school in San Francisco helps kids who learn differently. The school provides a Mel Levine-inspired environment and encourages students to learn about their personal learning styles. One former student relates how he went from getting straight D's in middle school to almost all A's in high school -- and into Cornell University. Read about the school.
IT'S FOOTBALL TIME AGAIN, and if your scholar/athlete is out on the field, make sure you know the symptoms of concussion, what concussion can do to higher mental processes, and the dangers of continuing to play after suffering a concussion. Two articles this week, one in The New York Times and one in Science Daily, attest to the dangers. Sorry to nag, but as they say: "A brain is a terrible thing to waste." Find the Times article. Find Science Daily's take on the topic.
RON DAVIS LECTURE. If you're a fan of dyslexia expert and author Ronald Davis, and if you live in the Chicago area, you're in luck. He has a two-hour lecture scheduled on the evening of October 14th in downtown Chicago. Find out more.
TAMARA FISHER'S most recent entry on her blog "Unwrapping the Gifted" is on RTI -- and she's concerned that the needs of the gifted aren't represented in the three-tiered RTI model. She explains her concerns... and then proposes changes in the RTI tiers to help address her concerns. She also provides links for those who want to learn more about RTI. Find her blog.
GIFTED WITH LD? OR JUST CAN'T SEE? An article in the Arizona Daily Star relates cases of children whose classroom achievement was greatly improved by addressing vision problems. According to the article, the American Optometric Association contends that as many as 60 percent of "problem learners" have undetected vision problems. The article also recounted how one bright but reluctant learner in a gifted ed class was not participating; after vision screening and treatment, both his confidence and his grades improved greatly. Read the article.
MORE NEWS as the week goes on...
HOLD THE PRESSES -- ER, THE BLOG. Hot news from the U.S. Census Bureau in a press release. (We saved you from having to read at least 50 other press releases with "back to school" or "school supplies" as their topics.) From the release: "...it's hot and many people are on vacation. But one of the nation's largest seasonal events will soon be under way impacting [sic] households from coast-to-coast [sic]. It's back to school time [sic]. From nursery school to college, 76 million students are headed to the classroom -- that's more than one-out-of-four [sic] of the total U.S. population age 3 and over... One statistic that may be a surprise -- the parents of two-thirds of students report that their children often like going to school. You can find these and more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at www.census.gov." Well, we like the fact that kids like school. Bless them.
GIFTED EDUCATION PRESS QUARTERLY. Maurice Fisher has issued his Fall issue (rushing the season, we think), and it includes an article by Joan Franklin Smutny, an editorial board advisor to 2e Newsletter, on "preserving the sense of wonder" by using an arts approach for gifted children. Another author suggests that Ernest Hemingway is a "prose impressionist for the gifted." Interested? Find the newsletter.
ADVOCACY SUMMER SCHOOL, PART 4. Wrightslaw has posted the fourth lesson in their "Summer School for Advocates" series. Are you ready for the final exam? (Have you even looked at the lessons?) Go to Special Ed Advocate.
ONLINE VERSUS CLASSROOM ED. A New York Times article reports on online education and its advantages over classroom education, drawing on a study recently published by SRI International. The conclusion: "On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction." Those of you homeschooling your gifted children, or providing your traditionally-schooled kids with supplemental enrichment online, or remediating that 2e kid, should feel justified. Find the article.
A WEAK WEEK for news and events from the world of giftedness, exceptionalities, parenting, and education...