An expanded curriculum for Gifted Children

Individualized instruction, with enrichment activities for high-ability students, work very well for the majority of class members. For the gifted, however, it's not enough. These students will be most challenged and will derive amazing benefits from a expanded curriculum.
An expanded curriculum is not one in which gifted students are simply given more of the same kind of work to keep them busy. (This is sometimes called the MOTS approach, which stands for “More Of The Same.”) What's the point of giving a student who demonstrates complete mastery of a concept the “opportunity” to do six more worksheets of the same kind? Loading gifted children up with busy work almost guarantees passive withdrawal or disruptive, perhaps aggressive, behavior brought about by boredom and frustration.
A program for gifted children must provide pathways by which these students may venture away from the basic curriculum in areas in which they excel. This expansion of the curriculum may take place in their own classroom with guidance from the teacher; on field trips to museums, science centers, or cultural performances; or in a resource room. The students come back to work with their other classmates when it's appropriate for them to do so, but do not necessarily do all of the same work that the other students are doing. Because the curriculum in some areas can be made shorter for gifted children, it allows them time for flexibility in other areas. Some gifted students will be “outside the umbrella” in every subject, others in only one or two. In all cases, the teacher or a teacher working with a gifted specialist creates the strategies that differentiate (modify) the curriculum to make fit the needs and learning styles of gifted students.
The goal of the expanded curriculum is to equip exceptional children for life. When teachers first encounter gifted students, it's clear that the children's analytical intelligence is highly developed; it's that kind of intelligence that makes them candidates for a gifted program in the first place. But life isn't about analytical intelligence, and gifted children are more that the sum of their test scores. They are human beings, and human beings don't spend their entire lives circling numbers and drawing analogies. They go through life meeting obstacles, encountering challenges, solving problems, and dealing with other people. The teacher's job is to act as diagnostician -to see where the children's gift lie and then to provide relevant, authentic experiences through which they will develop what Yale psychologist Robert Sternberg calls their “tacit” knowledge -the skills that will someday allow them to use their giftedness in a wider context, such as an office, laboratory, classroom, or studio.
Psychologist B.F. Skinner once said, “education is what survives after what has been learned has been forgotten.” That's a pretty good definition of tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge includes such skills as priority raking, allocating time and resources, and managing oneself and others.
Therefore, the ideal classroom for Gifted students will balance open-ended, stimulating, and creative opportunities for divergent thinking and analysis with meaningful, practical activities that involve day-to-day living. If gifted students spend all their time in abstract reasoning and have no opportunities to exercise their gifts in realistic situations, they may never learn how to harness their strengths in ways that are satisfying to them and enable them to make a contribution to society. They will still be gifted, but their gifts might be underdeveloped or even lost. They might become discipline problems or lethargic underachievers. Or they might become behavior problems on a spectrum that ranges from occasionally acting out in class to ending up in the juvenile justice system.

From the book: "Helping Gifted Children SOAR" by Carol A. Strip, Ph.D with Gretchen Hirsch