While we have extensively addressed special needs in our course, in this module I would like to address children who are gifted and talented because by the virtue of their curiosity and giftedness they also need differentiated education that can met their needs both, intellectually and social-emotionally.

While there are major efforts to address children with special needs in all education settings, differentiated education for children gifted and talented has not yet been mandated in the USA federal courts. Therefore the ability to provide this type of instruction for gifted and talented children is up to every state.

In some local school districts, parents and teachers have referred children to the GATE program. the GATE acronym comes from Gifted and Talented Education. Not all the schools have a classroom for the specific age/grade of the child, but children are able to attend a school housing the GATE program.

What is Giftedness?

According to Bayat (2012), there is no specific definition of the concept of giftedness or how to measure it. He also states that “there is no agreement of what might be considered an appropriate education for gifted children,” (Bayat, 2012).

The Marland report defined gifted children as those “children identified by professionally qualified persons who by virtue of outstanding abilities are capable of high performance. These are children who require differentiated educational programs and /or services beyond those normally provided by the regular school program in order to realize their contribution to self and society” (Marland, 1972).

In general there are six categories to look for when trying to identify gifted children:

• General intellectual ability
• Specific academic aptitude
• Creative or productive thinking
• Leadership ability
• Visual or preforming arts aptitude
• Psychomotor activity