Using LAMS to Enrich Teaching and Learning for Gifted and Talented Students - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Using LAMS to Enrich Teaching and Learning for Gifted and Talented Students

Dr Mark Butler

Gosford High School

2003 Macquarie University – First introduction to LAMS

2004 Premier’s Scholarship to travel to UK to examine

the LAMS trials.

2005 DET CLI LAMS ‘mini trial’

> Presentation to senior DET staff

>Presentation to Selective School Principals

>LAMS Report to Premier Published

>Published LAMS Paper in NSW Science Teachers

Association Journal

2006 Multi-discipline LAMS Learning Teams formed at

Gosford HS

>Presentation to Selective School Head Science Teachers

• All six schools found that LAMS had the potential to be a very useful teaching resource.
• All three Dimensions of the Quality Teaching Model (Intellectual Quality, Quality Learning Environment and Significance) could be addressed by LAMS.
• Some concern by the Department that higher order thinking skills had not been accessed by the LAMS sequences.

Bloom’s original taxonomy and Anderson’s updated version

• Creating?
• Evaluating?
• Analysing?
• Can LAMS lessons engage students individually and collaboratively in activities that involve and enhance higher order thinking skills?

Photoelectric Effect

Analysing

Atomic Models

Evaluating

Designing an experiment

Creating

• Identification?
• An intellectually gifted student as one who has, special abilities in seeing relationships, reasoning and thinking.
• A talented student as one who has the ability to apply themselves with such dedication that they perform at an outstanding level in one or more areas.
• Can LAMS be used to identify and enhance the education of gifted and talented students?

• David Krathwohl: Taxonomy of thinking in the affective domain.
• Benjamin Bloom, Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl: Cognitive thinking taxonomy
• Howard Gardner: Multiple intelligences
• Joseph Renzulli: The Enrichment Triad Model I) Exploratory activities, II) Skills development, III) Investigation of real problems

• Acceleration
• Facilitating activities with peers of similar abilities
• Enrichment activities beyond the classroom
• Mentors
• Independent, project-based and contract learning
• Differentiating the curriculum

• Differentiated instruction occurs when a teacher proactively plans varied approaches to what students need to learn, how they will learn it, and/or how they can express what they have learned in order to increase the likelihood that each student will learn as much as he or she can as efficiently as possible.

Tomlinson, C. A. (2003). Differentiating instruction for academic diversity. In J. M. Cooper (Ed.), Classroom teaching skills, 7th ed (pp 149-180). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

• Content
• Process
• Product
• Learning Environment

* Detail from WA DET Gifted and Talented Education Policy

• Uses information to illustrate abstract ideas and based on concepts rather than on the acquisition of knowledge
• Arranged to challenge students to formulate concepts, develop relationships and make applications
• Organisationally economic to facilitate transfer of learning, memory and understanding of concepts and generalisations
• An expansion of regular curriculum to include the study of gifted and creative individuals and the investigative techniques used by scholars in different disciplines
• More abstract, complex and based on ideas that have a wide range of applicability both within and across disciplines
• Greater variety than the classroom curriculum

• Pre-testing
• Stresses the use of information rather than the acquisition of it
• Provides opportunities for problem solving and creativity
• Uses discovery and inductive learning techniques
• Leads students to higher levels of thinking
• Ensures learning is structured, but open-ended
• Ensures students have the opportunity to give evidence to support their reasoning, not just the correct answer
• Provides greater freedom of choice in what and how students learn.

• Resemble the products being studied and developed by the experts in the field (report, talk, poster, film, play, etc)
• Allows solutions to real problems
• Allows for presentation of these problems and solutions to a real audience
• Evaluated by an appropriate audience and by the student
• Extend solutions to generalisations
• Demonstrate a transformation of information which is based on the collection and analysis of original data rather than a summary of others' research

• variety
• flexibility
• more and varied resources
• sophisticated equipment
• warmth and trust
• non-threatening situations for testing views, risk taking
• provision of situations to promote creative and divergent thinking

• Overuse
• Access
• Limiting learning styles
• Time in setting up suitable sequences
• Students Taking the easy option
• Content/information versus knowledge/ understanding

• Some student choice in what and how they will learn (multiple sequences?)
• Pre-testing to avoid repetition.
• A range of optional extension activities.
• Students challenged to form and apply concepts from rich (multidiscipline) content
• LAMS dovetailed with a range of other pedagogies.
• Students formulate problems, questions and sequences.
• Open ended questions and activities used.
• High expectation about quality of reports (product)
• Should facilitate learning beyond the classroom