Understand How To Support And Stretch High Achievers Or Gifted Students

Action research is an approach which is appropriate in any context when “specific knowledge is required for a specific problem in a specific situation, or when a new approach is to be grafted on to an existing system” (Cohen and Manion 1994 P. 194 cited by Bell 2010 P.6)

The aim of this research is to understand how to support and stretch high achievers or gifted students within the curriculum to ensure that their learning needs are met according to their potentials?
'Gifted' is a term used to describe children who have the potential to develop significantly beyond what is expected for their age in their academic subjects. (BBC 2015)

Two major reasons must be acknowledged in order to help children to realise their high-level potential:
• As

(Freeman et al. 2007)

The new curriculum implemented in my placement school requires that every child should be supported, challenged and stretched according to her/his potentials. According to School Reform Minister Nick Gibb
“The new curriculum which will not only give young people a solid grounding in the basics but also challenge them and ensure they fulfil every ounce of their potential.”
(Gibb and Department for Education 2014)

During my second teaching practice in my co-educational school, I identified a group of girls in my year 2 class as gifted children. The girls seem to possess a general intellectual ability that makes them always superior to the rest of the class. Upon discussions made with the class teacher and my mentor who is the Key Stage one
Leader about if there are any provisions or policy implemented by the school to support the gifted children, I was informed of none and that it is the teacher’s responsibility alone to adopt the appropriate approaches to cater to the needs of those students and stretch them within the

Another motive to do this research that I have noticed that those students have no consideration to the other student’s needs to learn during class discussions, they shout out their answers quickly and leave no chance for other students to answer which leads to laziness and de-motivation among other students and lack of interest in the task at hand and raise several behaviours issues as well. I’ve been trying to implement some behaviour methods like sanctions and rewards to restore order and discipline in the classroom, but I started to notice that depriving those students from shouting out loud or showing off their knowledge to their peers in the classroom leads to a kind of depression and loss of interest.

Again, I am hoping through this research to learn the proper approach to make them in charge of their own behaviour and have them acknowledge that they have a high responsibility to manage their own and each other’s behaviour which hopefully may lead them to become independent and self-disciplined learners within a framework of mutual respect and tolerance (Wallace et al. 2008) and without causing any underachievement for them or others.

The initial question of this research