Meeting the needs of gifted preschoolers

Children Today, March-April, 1985 by Ann E. Lupkowski, Elizabeth A. Lupkowski

Children like these may be part of the three to five percent of the population that can be classified as "gifted" or "talented." It is likely that Head Start and other preschool teachers will have at least one of these gifted children in their classrooms during their careers. In order to adequately meet their needs, it is necessary for teachers to be aware of characteristics of gifted children and to develop strategies for meeting their needs.

Generally, a child is characterized as "gifted" if he or she shows above-average ability or potential in one or more of the following areas: 1) general intellectual ability, 2) specific academic aptitude, 3) leadership ability, 4) creative or productive thinking, 5) visual and performing arts, or 6) psychomotor ability.

Identification

Gifted children, who come from all socioeconomic backgrounds, can be identified by using traditional intelligence tests and parent reports or through observation of behaviors exhibited in the classroom and at home.

Gifted children can be identified at a young age. The Seattle Project at the University of Washington, which was one of the programs in the country established to serve gifted young children (and is no longer in operation), identified young children through age five who demonstrated intellectual superiority. Project researchers identified young children who were able to perform extraordinary intellectual feats but did not necessarily score at the highest ranges on general intelligence tests. Children were selected on the basis of intelligence, spatial reasoning, reading and mathematics skills and memory.

Gifted young children may show "peaks" of extraordinarily high performance in some areas--but not necessarily in all cognitive ability areas--when they are tested using standardized intelligence tests. A child may not do well on parts of an intelligence test because of a short attention span, discomfort with unfamiliar people or strange surroundings, or because the child plays games with the test materials. Because many intelligence tests require verbal responses to items, children who have difficulty expressing themselves verbally may not score as high as they could on a non-verbal test.

Standardized intelligence tests have been fairly unsuccessful in the identification of young gifted children since IQ tests are only partially reliable before the child reaches the age of five or six. Data from the Seattle Project suggest that scores in the areas of best performance may be the best indicators of a child's capabilities. Those concerned should look at what the child can do instead of what he or she cannot do. A profile of the child--composed of a variety of test scores and teacher and parent reports--could be compiled. Those involved with identification of gifted children could then examine the profiles and focus on the areas of highest performance as possible indicators of giftedness.

Since even the most complete battery of tests may not provide a good estimate of children's abilities, it is necessary to include parent reports detailing children's capabilities.

Parent Reports

Parent can be used as an immediate screening device in the identification of preschool gifted children. Parents do know their own children: There is evidence from previous research that parents are reasonably accurate when it comes to estimating their own child's intellectual abilities. Questionnaire and interview formats can be used to elicit information. Information from parents is especially useful if they provide examples of the children's behavior rather than simply estimating their ability level. Trained judges can then rate the parents' information to assess the extent of the child's intellectural precocity.

Parents may tend to over-estimate their children's abilities. However, the Seattle Project collected several years of evidence demonstrating that parental ratings compare positively with a child's later test performance. Researchers found several children who earned average test scores at age two but had extraordinary test scores two years later. Parent reports obtained when these children were two years old did predict their later extraordinary performance.

Observations

If they participate in the screening process, parents and preschool teachers must be aware of the characteristics of young gifted children. It is important to remember that the gifted child may show peaks of high performance in some areas, but not necessarily in all cognitive areas. However, isolated incidents cannot confirm a child's giftedness; it is necessary to look for trends and patterns in the child's development. Following are some of the behaviors, which we and others have observed, that may be displayed by young gifted children.

* Long attention span. The attention span of gifted children is often longer than that of their peers. For example, when asked to count the elephants on a book cover, 3-year-old Chris persisted until she had counted all 103 elephants. Michelle, also 3, would continue "projects" from one day to the next. Some young gifted children are able to work on projects for blocks of time as long as 45 minutes to 2-1/2 hours.