Ways to Support Gifted Girls

  • Identify them early. The best age for evaluating and identifying gifted girls is between 3.5 and 7. For some gifted girls, early school entrance is beneficial.
  • Provide special programs that stimulate and challenge them.
  • Encourage them to take higher level math and science courses.
  • Use multiple measures of ability and achievement. Females still score lower on the Scholastic Aptitude Test, the College Board Achievement Test, The Graduate Record Examination, and other examinations critical for college and graduate school admision. Most of these tests underpredict female performance and overpredict male performance.
  • Encourage them to take credict for their successes and recognize their own talents.
  • Provide material to compensate for the lack of inclusion of women's acomplishments in literature or textbooks.
  • Foster friendships with gifted peers who share similar interests.
  • Provide role models of women in traditional and nontraditional careers who have successfully integrated multiple aspect of their lives.
  • Avoid sex-role stereotyping. Encourage awareness of biased depictions of girls and women in the media. (As recently as January 2000, the Barbie personal computer for girls came loaded with a little more than half of the educational software on the companion computer for boys).
  • Encourage independence and risk-taking.
  • Avoid having different expectations for girls than for boys.

When Gifted Kids don't have all the answers, by Jim Delisle & Judy Galbraith

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