Differentiation in Gifted - differentiation is one of those educational terms we throw around and believe it to be the solution to all of our problems. If we have students of varying abilities in our classroom, simply differentiate.

How to Handle Pace in the Classroom - we have those students who seem to process and understand things a lot quicker than the rest of the class. They move at a very fast pace. The question is what to do with these students?

Student Choice - One way you can certainly challenge students and differentiate up in the classroom is to provide them with choices. This could be a choice in topics learned, choice in how this is learned, choice with who you learn it with, and choice in how you are going to determine mastery.

Mentors/Mentorships - Even though teachers are expected to be the experts in their subject area, often times there are things that we don't know. This is especially true with gifted students who might come with a lot of prior understanding and need to be challenged at a level the teacher cannot provide.

My Child is Gifted…Now What? - what does it mean when your child is identified as gifted? What are your next steps?

5 Ways to Work With Your Gifted Child's Teacher - for parents of gifted children, teachers should have the same goal about a child which is ensure he or she is growing as a learner. This would seemingly put both of them on the same page but there are times parents and teachers find themselves at odds with one another.

What are some good books to read about raising gifted children? - as a parent of a gifted child you are probably discovering there are some different behaviors than might be in a typical child that parent books don't discuss.

5 Things Never to Say to Your Gifted Child - here are 5 of the things you should avoid saying to your gifted child and the reason you should not say them.

Over-excitabilities - some gifted students come with hypersensitivities. Learn what some of these might be.

Asynchronous Development - your child’s emotional and academic intelligence might not match up. Find out why.

Self Control/Regulation (Executive Functioning Skills) - are you unable to keep your emotions in check? Can you not resist the urge to do something when it tempts you? Do you find yourself blurting out answers the second they pop into your head? If the answer is yes to any of these you might have a self-control/self-regulation issues.

Perseverance/Grit (Executive Functioning Skills) - perseverance is the ability to follow through or to push through when faced with obstacles.

Flexibility (Executive Functioning Skills) - all of the other executive functioning skills do not really work if you are not flexible with your thinking. Your plans change, the time management is wrecked by an assembly, and trying to keep your focus might be affected by circumstances beyond your control.

Working Memory (Executive Functioning Skills) - in order to learn, we have to hold something in our minds at least long enough for us to apply it.

Focus (Executive Functioning Skills) - none of the other executive functioning skills work effectively if a student is not able to focus.

Metacognition (Executive Functioning Skills) - metacognition is an awareness of your own thoughts. But how do you teach students to be aware of this? You provide them structure to be able to think about their thinking.

Task initiation (Executive Functioning Skills) - you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink. Similarly, you can give a student a task, but it doesn't mean they are going to get started on it.

Time Management (Executive Functioning Skills) - you can plan and organize yourself all you want, but if you are unable to manage the time you are allotted, nothing is going to get done.

Organization (Executive Functioning Skills) - there are many aspects to organization for a student at school. There is their schoolwork, their materials, their personal belongings, their time, and their thoughts.

Planning (Executive Functioning Skills) - We always expect students to have a plan, but do we always show them how to do it? What if we were more deliberate about teaching students how you plan out a long term project, or a study schedule for an upcoming test, or even their workload for the current day?

Trends (Depth and Complexity icon) - Trends are patterns over time. Why does something become popular? Why does it become unpopular? What causes some things to stand the test of time while others become outdated in weeks? We can try our best to predict these trends and anticipate what is going to happen.

Multiple Perspectives (Depth and Complexity icon) - It is often said that there are two sides to every story. In reality, there are as many sides to the story as there were people present. Yet the story is usually only told from one of these perspectives.

Unanswered Questions (Depth and Complexity icon) - Often in school, students are presented with questions that they are expected to find a correct answer to. This could be a math problem, how to spell a word, the name of a figure, event, or date in history, or how sounds waves work.

Ethics (Depth and Complexity icon) - ethics are the gray areas we encounter when looking at a situation. For example, it is wrong to shout in the classroom. In fact, it is a rule. But what if someone injured themselves and you needed to yell for help? Wouldn't that make you action justified?

Rules (Depth and Complexity icon) - rules are fairly simple aren't they? You either can do something or you can't. And if you break a rule, there are consequences or punishments that might follow. But it is not that simple.

Big Idea (Depth and Complexity icon) - what's the big idea? We often ask this question. The big idea is what you are supposed to get or be learning from something. These are sometimes called essential questions or learning objectives, but ultimately the big idea is what it all boils down to.

Patterns (Depth and Complexity icons) - in this video we will discuss how students can look for patterns in academics, in sports, and in their own lives in order to try and predict the most probable outcome.

Details - the devil is in the details and this couldn't be more true. Details are what allow people to fully understand something and without them, something may get lost.

Over Time - 1 of the 11 icons in the Depth and Complexity thinking framework, this is a complexity icon that takes a look at how things change (and sometimes do not) change over a given period of time.

Language of the Discipline - 1 of the 11 icons in the Depth and Complexity thinking framework, Language of the Discipline means helping students to understand the context of the language being used. What might mean one thing in one discipline might change in another.

Creating a Culture for Higher-Level Questioning in the Classroom: if you want to challenge students with higher-level questioning in your classroom, you have to set the proper culture.

Bloom's Taxonomy - Benjamin Bloom created a taxonomy for the various levels of questioning and thinking back in 1953. Now, 70 years later his taxonomy still very much resonates in the classrooms of the 21st century.

Problem-Based Learning - One of the strategies under the inquiry-based learning umbrella, problem-based learning seeks to make the learning authentic for students and to help them see the context of what it is they are learning.

Case-Based Learning - Concluding the theme of inquiry learning, this Todd Talk looks at case-based learning, a method used widely in the medical and law professions but not used very commonly in US primary schools.

Steps to Project-Based Learning - Projects put students in a real-world setting and ask them to complete a task meeting the requirements as laid out by the project. Projects teach students how to learn for themselves.

Self/Peer Evaluations - How can you get a better idea of a student's contributions to his group when collaborating? Ask those who are working with him to tell you.

Teachers provide you with a rubric and you tuck it away in your folder never to see the light of day. You are missing a prime opportunity because the teacher has given you a blueprint for how to be successful. All you have to do is the answer the rubric.

Teaching is a lot of work and sometimes we want to take the easy way out. This usually does not result in quality learning. Same goes when making rubrics. You should not rely on an on-line program such as Rubistar if you want to have meaningful, personalized, objective rubrics.

Creating Rubrics - Rubrics are a valuable way for teachers to assess students in non-traditional, performance-based assessments, many of which require students to employ 21st century skills.

Measure What Matters with your WEPs - in the state of Ohio we are required to write Written Education Plans (WEPs) for any student receiving gifted services. Part of this plan is setting goals. But how do you measure skills? This is possible and this video shows you how you can write WEP goals that allow you to measure what matters.

Acceleration versus Enrichment - these are two terms you will often hear in relation to gifted students and how we challenge them. Acceleration is about pace and moving through the material more quickly because the understanding is happening faster. Enrichment is the about depth.

Asynchronous development means that a child's academic levels are moving at a different pace than his maturity levels. This happens often with gifted children who can think of a complex solution but don't know how to hold the pencil to write down the idea.

Differentiation in Gifted - differentiation is one of those educational terms we throw around and believe it to be the solution to all of our problems. If we have students of varying abilities in our classroom, simply differentiate.

Raising the rigor of your tests, worksheets, and homework - This Todd Talk will provide tips, examples, and ideas for taking assessments, worksheets, homework, or virtual tasks, and raising the rigor of the questions by adapting them to higher order thinking.

Often times we know how to differentiate down to meet the needs of a student who is struggling, but what about differentiating up for a student who needs challenged?

Grading the Process - We traditionally grade students at the end of learning, usually in a summative assessment designed to determine whether students have mastered what it is we wanted them to have learned.

Students as Teachers - What can make an assessment meaningful? By having students involved in the process. The more you include them in the learning process the better change students will reach an enduring understanding.

Performance Assessment - When it comes to measuring what students have learned, there are more choices than the traditional assessments of multiple choice.

Capstones - Capstones are an excellent way to assess students meaningfully by reflecting on what they have learned. They can be set up various ways but are typically long-term projects that encapsulate what was learned.

Magnet Programs - There are lots of different ways to group gifted students. One of these is through a magnet program where students are pulled from all over to one location.

Developing Grit in Gifted Children - Grit is the ability for someone to push through when things get difficult or challenging. This can be a skill that is particularly difficult to develop in gifted students because early in their lives, things aren't that difficult.

Teaching Leadership - With many 21st century skills, we provide students with engaging lessons and hope for the best. We need to be more purposeful about the teaching of 21st century skills.

Teaching Creativity - We ask students to be creative all of the time but are we explicitly teaching our students how to be creative by giving them assignments that lets them access their creative thinking?

Teaching Public Speaking - A valuable 21st century skill for any student to possess. How do you teach public speaking though? 1) You provide exemplar speeches to learn from as well as poor ones. 2) You provide students with the space.

Underachievement - Underachievement is when a student is not working to their potential. This affects 10 to 50% of our gifted students, the ones with the highest potential, and can have long-term affects on their lives.

Academic Extra-Curricular Competitions - Athletes are not the only group of students who can compete using their skills. There are academic extra-curricular competitions where students use their academic skills.

Model United Nations - A great academic extra curricular activity, Model United Nations involves taking part in a simulation where you represent a country and discuss and debate global issues.

Invention League - this Todd Talk discusses Invention League (also known as Invention Convention). In this, a student takes a problem and tries to invent something that will help with it.

Destination Imagination - Academic extra-curriculars allows students to not only display their cognitive abilities, but their creativity as well. One such program is Destination Imagination.

Student contracts - Student contracts can be useful for a few reasons. It keeps students organized, it makes them part of the learning process, and it helps them to maintain focus, especially on long-term projects.

Graphic Organizers - if you are seeking to focus your students, look no further than a good graphic organizer. As its name states, this is a graphic that helps students to organize their thoughts as well as helping them see connections and relationships.

What is Intelligence and Does It Matter? - How do we determine a person's intelligence? For better or worse we give someone a test and assign them a number. These tests attempt to determine how well a person reasons or thinks logically.

Zone of Proximal Development - just like Goldilocks, there are things that are too easy to learn and others that are too hard. And you want students where things are just right, where they need a little guidance because they are learning something that is challenging. This is known as the zone of proximal development.

Mindset in the Classroom - We often talk about changing our mindsets, but what exactly does that mean? What is the difference between a fixed and growth mindset? How do you encourage students to have a growth mindset in the classroom?

Classroom setup - Are you being purposeful about the way you physically set up your classroom? Is this setup conducive to your students being able to best learn?

Reflection in the Classroom - The traditional method of teaching is introduce something, have students practice it, and assess whether they have gotten it. What is missing here is the additional layer or step of reflecting upon what was learned.