Blog

Encourage Interests, Don’t Expect Passions

“Passion” is kind of a ridiculous expectation when you think about it.

21st Century Careers

The idea of a 21st century may sound futuristic, but we’re already more than 20% through the century! 21st century careers are already happening all around us. You just need to know where to look!

What We Can Learn From Super Mario’s Levels

If the designers have done their jobs, the player should always feel slightly challenged, but never overwhelmed. As teachers, we should aim for the same goal: students who are stimulated but not frustrated.

Smart Kids and the Curse of the Kidney Table

What happens when a student never gets called over to work with the teacher?

Giving Better Presentations

It’s conference season, and that means we’ll all be settling in for a few sessions. I’ve put together a free resource to try to make those sessions more enjoyable for both presenter and attendee.

What is up with those “New” Depth and Complexity Icons!?

I love the prompts of depth and complexity and the content imperatives. But some teachers are being asked to use eight new prompts that just aren’t as good as the classics.

Beware Praising Easy Tasks, Even In Kindergarten

The “smart” label we give kids often really means “things are easy for you.” What are the ramifications of this dangerous praise?

What Does “Smart” Even Mean?

We praise kids for being “smart”, but what do we actually mean by it? What are we actually praising? It’s a surprisingly tricky word to figure out.

Reader Question: Morning Bell Work

I received a question from a reader regarding some unstructured time in the mornings. Sounds like the perfect chance for kids to pursue their curiosity – inspired by some delightful puzzlements, of course!

Lots of Recommended Books

Lots and lots of friends on Facebook and Twitter sent in their favorite books to use with gifted kids. Enjoy!

Abundance or Deficit Thinking?

It’s easy to be miserly and hold onto every resource, thinking it might be the last. But I’ve learned that what I have can grow – when I use it well. The same is true of our classroom resources.

Expectations and Scaffolds

When I see successful lessons, I’m almost always most impressed with how the teacher has set the stage for success. When I look back on my biggest failures, it was almost always a lack scaffolding that caused the problem. Expectations and scaffolds are vital to classroom success.

What if you lived in Vegas but worked in San Francisco?

Is it possible to save money by commuting to San Francisco from Las Vegas?

Books with 700, 800, 900, & 1000 Lexile, Recommended By Teachers

A reader was looking for examples of high-quality books for gifted/talented 4th and 5th graders, but she was constrained to a lexile range of 900-1000. Here are the recs I received…

Important vs Urgent: The Daily Checklist

A daily checklist is a powerful tool (for teachers and students) to remember those important, but not urgent, tasks.

Focus on what’s Important, not what’s Urgent.

It’s so easy for the daily chaos of suddenly urgent tasks to overwhelm what really matters. How can we better focus on those long-term, important tasks?

Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Recommendations

Many readers sent in recommendations for sci-fi and fantasy stories for gifted readers. I’ve gathered these together here as a growing collection.

Phrases to Open Up a Discussion (Lunar Survival Skills Part 2)

One of my favorite open-ended, creative activities becomes even better with careful phrasing on my part. These three questions will help you be the facilitator of a discussion, rather than the authority.

Why Label Kids As “Gifted”?

When speaking about giftedness, I am often told that “labels are harmful.” Here’s why I think labels have a powerful (but limited) purpose.

Summer 2016 Reading Recs

Looking for something to read this summer? Here are a few sorta-teaching-related texts I’ve enjoyed.

Reader Question: Unusual Animals

A reader asks how we can take the typical “look up facts online and then present with PowerPoint” task to an appropriate level of challenge.

The Curse Of Knowledge

The Curse of Knowledge: once you know something, it’s hard to think from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know it. And the more you know, the harder it gets.

A Clock Math Project?

A reader wrote in, asking how to differentiate for a task like reading analog clocks. What to do with a student who has mastered this skill? What’s a good math clock project?

Creating Better Research Questions

Once students have a topic they’d like to research, how do we help them form more interesting questions?

Teaching Students To Explain Their Thinking

It’s a weird trap: because a child is “so smart”, everyone thinks any gaps in their skills are a result of laziness or defiance. But sometimes the brightest kid needs small group instruction for a skill the rest of the class already gets.

Giving Feedback When The Work Is Great

Our brightest kids can go through school without ever receiving meaningful feedback. This can set up a fear of feedback and a fixed mindset. Here are some ways you can chat with kids about their work…

What Could You Do With This Pancake Flipping Robot?

I love videos of robots messing up tasks. This one in particular struck a chord, because we get to see the robot learn from his mistakes. Let’s have students write him some advice…

Academic Love Letters

We’re going to take the Academic Valentine idea from earlier, and extend it into a full blown love letter – just in time for Valentine’s Day!

Long Term Success: Wondering About Math

Continuing our series on long-term success, we look at the art of wondering. Often our gifted kids wonder deeper and longer than others. But do they wonder about math?

3 Books I Loved in 2015

One of my goals for 2015 was to read 48 books. Out of those, here are 3 that you might enjoy, and that tangentially relate to gifted education:

Prime Number Explorations

Students learn about prime numbers early in their careers, but the true, quirky nature of these numbers isn’t really explored unless kids go on to become math majors. Here are three fun prime explorations suitable for even young students.

Long Term Success: Strengths Beat Weaknesses

In this second part of a series on Long-Term Success, we look at how to handle gifted students’ weaknesses by creating a culture that’s focused on strengths.

Long Term Success: Excelling In Many Areas

Let’s explore keys to long-term student success. The first is students ability to excel in many areas.

Looking Back at 2015

Top articles, videos, and a few takeaways from Byrdseed’s 2015.

A Shopping List for Kids (and Adults) With Intensities

Here’s a list of interesting items to help intense students in a classroom setting. Fidgety tools, special sets, and even ear plugs!

Four Types of Questions You Can Ask

Asking questions is such a basic tool of teaching, yet how many of us have ever been taught to ask good questions? In this opening to a series about questioning, we’ll explore how to get students asking each other questions.

Talking Less: Two Discussion Tics

Leading discussions is hard work. To grease the wheels, I developed two weird tics: re-stating and repeating louder. Both increase dependency on me, and enable students to become passive listeners.

Tennessee Keynote: So Much More Than Smart Kids

Here’s the last 20 minutes of my keynote from Tennessee’s 2015 state gifted conference. Live audio synced up with my slides.

Non-Examples are as Important as Examples

As teachers, we use tons of examples to illustrate concepts. But an example becomes even more powerful when paired with its opposite: the non-example.

Talking Less: Making Better Class Announcements

Many of our words are wasted not on teaching, but on announcements, directions, and updates. Imagine yourself waiting at an airport. Think of the constant stream of “important announcements” broadcast over the speakers. There are so many, that you simply stop hearing them.

Talking Less: Shocking Stats On What Students Can Hear

When you’re up speaking in front of a group, it’s so easy to assume that they’re hanging on your every word. The reality is we are incapable of hearing as fast as people speak. We can’t hear everything someone says, let alone remember, let alone understand.

Being a Healthier Teacher: Stopping Burnout

As someone who experienced burn out while teaching, and has watched friends and family members burn out as well, I know that it’s a real affliction, but one that is rarely addressed.

Being a Healthier Teacher: 3 Ways To Disrupt Your Status Quo

In this article we’ll look at why we allow ourselves to stay in unhealthy situations for years. Why don’t we make changes to better ourselves? The status quo bias has an answer…

Being A Healthier Teacher: 3 Ways To Set Limits

Almost every teacher I asked said they regularly leave school still feeling they have a lot of work to do. And almost everyone agrees to do things they don’t really want to do. This leads to burnout and cynicism! Let’s look at 3 ways to set limits

Being A Healthier Teacher: Focus On Your Strengths

Teaching is a job that never ends, and as a result, it starts to take over every aspect of a teacher’s life. This is bad. You get stressed, which leads to unhealthy behavior, which leads to more stress, and so on! But healthy, happy students need a healthy, happy teacher.

First Level: 3 Final Ideas

A final wrap up of the First Level series, three ideas from the archives that fit perfectly with setting up a long term goal in the first weeks of school.

First Level: Non-Academic Goals

Do you know what your kids’ goals are beyond grades? Take a few minutes to delve into their lives outside of the classroom.

First Levels: Sentence Starters

As silly as it may sound, providing sentence stems or “fill in the blanks” can give your kids the scaffold they need to achieve a higher level of success.

First Levels: Classroom Layout

One “first level” teachers must carefully prepare is the physical classroom layout.

Advice On Planning From Super Mario’s Creator

“When we’re doing an action game… we begin making level one once everything else is completed.” – Shigeru Miyamoto

7 Ways To Add Complexity

Adjusting a task’s complexity to match a student’s skill is key to success in the classroom, but how can you change the level of complexity?

Small Groups Aren’t Just For Struggling Students

Small groups can both add and reduce complexity to a task. I know that I always let my advanced students just “work on their own.” But think about the power of bringing your five top kids together (even for ten minutes a week) and pushing them a little.

Bad Behavior or Lack of Complexity?

Differentiation means being aware of both a student’s skill and the complexity of a task. And it’s easier to adjust a task in the short term than to change a student’s skill.

Complexity Is A Good Thing

Differentiation is all about balancing the complexity of a task with the skill of the learner.

An Easy Way To Ask For Student Feedback

I’m sure, as a teacher, you wonder about your students’ honest feedback. You’d like to know what they really think, but formal, anonymous evaluations from students are probably pretty darn scary. Here’s a much simpler way to get started…

Encourage Curiosity With Calculators

It’s easy to fall in love with chasing the newest technology to use in the classroom. But sometimes, the perfect tool is a plain old calculator. We’ll be using this tool to develop curiosity about math.

Expectations Influence Performance

One comment I hear that really breaks my heart is: “My students couldn’t do that.”

Calvin: I Thought You Were Smart

A great strip from Calvin and Hobbes for opening up a discussion about hard work, being “smart,” and mindsets in the classroom.

Vocab Puzzle: Antonym Paths

Begin with a small, simple word and identify its antonym. Then, take this second word and find its antonym. Many times, you’ll find that an antonym of an antonym isn’t always related the original word.

Creative Coloring Books

I recently took a trip to New York and visited the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. In the gift shop they had a series of fantastic coloring books based on famous artists, including: Dali, Van Gogh, and Monet.

Start A Lesson With A Music Video

I love collecting intriguing images and videos – things that stop me in my tracks and pique my curiosity. I always figure that if it fascinates me, students would probably be interested also. Often, these visuals work as wonderful hooks for a lesson you need to teach.

Success Isn’t A Straight Line

Students I speak to have a powerful fear of making a life-altering mistake in their teens. Whether it’s a low grade, an easy class, or the wrong extracurricular, students think that an early error will derail their entire lives. They see life as a straight line.

Exploring Palindromes in ELA and Math

Palindromes are one of those fun ideas that some gifted kids just latch onto. We’ll check out palindromic words, phrases, and even numbers in this article.

Recommendation: Engaging Gifted Readers & Writers

A quick review of Ken Smith’s book “Engaging Gifted Readers & Writers.” Definitely worth checking out!

2015 Annual Goals Revisited

A checkup on the 2015 Annual Goals I posted last month. Successes, semi-successes, and full on failures so far!

Is a Task Boring, Relaxing, Challenging, or Stressful?

Too easy for your skills and the task is boring. Too much of a challenge, and it becomes stressful. Medium challenge, high skill? It’s a relaxing task. But when we match high skill and high challenge, we can activate “flow.”

Quick Strategy Game: Domineering

Wanted to share another cheap, quick, and simple game that has interesting complexities and connections to math. This game is called Domineering. All you need are paper and a pencil. Graph paper would be a luxury.

On Grouping Gifted Students

I am frequently asked about research supporting gifted programs. Is there evidence that putting gifted kids together is a good thing? The short answer: yes.

How I Set My Annual Goals

It’s so easy to let a new year get away from you. By February, I’m already settled back into old habits and ruts. I want to fight this! I take an evening and set up some bold but attainable goals, thinking purposefully about the upcoming year.

Don’t Say “Great job!”

Not only is vague praise less useful than a specific compliment, but, combined with easy tasks, it can even be damaging to students’ belief in their abilities.

2014 In Review

One of my favorite parts of running Byrdseed is looking back at the end of each year and cataloging my travels, writing, and video making.

Three Videos With Mind-Blowing Optical Illusions

Paradoxes and illusions are a great area of study to blow students’ minds. I recently discovered an amazing artist, Kokichi Sugihara, who creates and films optical illusions using just paper and balls.

Gifts for the Gifted Classroom

Some of my favorite games, novels, creativity books, and tools for differentiation.

One Tip to Ease An Overwhelmed Brain

I gave one kid the job of being Mr. Byrd’s Brain.

Going Beyond “Challenge Words” In Spelling

Many students blow past grade-level spelling and vocabulary at a young age. Unfortunately, a common technique to “challenge” them is to find harder and more obscure words for their spelling list. Instead, let’s take advantage of the built-in complexity of common words with multiple-meanings.

Self Control Is A Limited Resource

The wise teacher knows how hard to push her class and when to ease up, because self control is a limited resource for everyone.

Game Recommendation: Qwirkle

Every veteran teacher has a well-stocked board game closet for those special days. Qwirkle is a great addition to your arsenal.

What Influences A Character’s Traits?

To add depth to character analysis, let’s look beyond a character’s traits and dig into what influenced them to have those traits.

Paradox: Does Majority Rule?

A quick, but challenging discussion topic for any age: “Is it always fair to make decisions based on a majority vote?”

Depth and Complexity vs Bloom’s Taxonomy: You Need Both

You can use the prompts of depth and complexity yet still ask very shallow questions. Here’s how to avoid this common pitfall…

Dino Obsession: Intellectual Overexcitability In Action

If you’re wondering what an “intellectual overexcitability” might look like, here’s me in kindergarten…

The Real Causes of Procrastination

Joanne Foster led an interesting session about the true causes of students’ procrastination. It’s more complex than simple laziness.

The Don’t Do List

“Yes” is so easy to say, and it makes people happy, but soon you’ve built up the expectation that you’ll help with everything. If we say “yes” to every request, then we’re not differentiating between what’s important and what’s not.

Studying Ambiguous Sentences

This type of sentence has great possibilities for classroom application because of its two different interpretations. It’s a perfect tool to: demonstrate careful reading, showcase the need for editing while writing, and encourage creativity and divergent thinking.

Thinking, Not Merely Memorizing, In Math

Creativity and math may seem completely incompatible. Math is when students follow predefined steps to arrive at an exact answer! Here are four ideas for quick math warmups that encourage students to use divergent, creative thinking.

Jabberwocky, Parts of Speech, and Context Clues

Let’s see how we can use a classic piece of poetry to enhance a lesson on parts of speech or context clues. This provides exposure to a great work and also increases the complexity of a typical task.

An Image for Divergent Thinking Practice

I think this is an interesting way to practice our students’ divergent thinking skills. What else could this trash can’s icon represent?

Calvin, High-Energy, and Sports

This comic highlights an additionally unfortunate issue high-energy kids suffer from: they’re physically active, yet may not be particularly interested in sports.

Writing Mother’s Day Similes

Mother’s Day is coming up, and it’s the perfect chance to practice figurative language. Help your students create thoughtful cards, packed with rich similes and metaphors that relate directly to their mothers.

Comparing The Best vs My Favorite

Are bests the same as favorites? Can your class come up with a suitable definition of the difference?

The Mysterious Benedict Society – Book Study Ideas

After it was recommended dozens of times, I finally read The Mysterious Benedict Society and I wish I had read it sooner!

Understanding High Energy Gifted Kids

To understand how giftedness and physical energy are connected, stop picturing a fidgety kid interrupting the class. Instead imagine him deeply engrossed in his favorite activity.

Taxes, Language Arts, and Social Studies

It’s tax season here in the US! The obvious classroom application is a math lesson about percents, but taxes can lead to an even more interesting discussion within language arts and social studies.

Why Gifted Kids May Not Be Great Tutors

It’s so easy to assume gifted kids will be the academic leaders in a classroom. Beacons of light for the other kids to follow. Dina Brulles and Susan Winebrenner explain the problem…

A Millionaire By Doubling Pennies

How long will it take to get a million dollars if you start with a penny and double it?

Olympic Medal Math Project

In the paper, I read about Norway’s dominance of the Winter Olympics, despite being a tiny country. I love this juxtaposition of unexpected data! Let’s turn it into a math project. Here are some questions I thought of…

Gifted Children and Anxiety

The obvious benefit of gifted students’ increased sensitivity is that they learn faster, since they pick up on so much more. But this sensitivity also has a dark side: turning our kids into anxious worriers.

Create A Civilization: Governments

My students, as part of their Create A Civilization project, had to select a type of government and explain its consequences. So I loved finding this list of all the different types of government.

Good At Too Many Things?

Multipotentiality is a fancy way of saying “good at many things.” It’s a defining trait of gifted kids, and you’ve probably seen it in action: a student writes beautifully, has mastered a musical instrument, excels in math, and still gets picked near the top in PE. Yet, this trait is one of the Eight Great Gripes of gifted kids.

Advanced Vocab: Words With Foreign Origins

Don’t bore students with another dull list of spelling words. Challenge them with weekly lists of common English words and phrases borrowed from another language.