This page is devoted to providing and/or listing resources that are useful particularly for teaching mathematically gifted students in grades 6, 7 and 8.
Here are some observations that you might find useful. In most schools, the teacher has the repsonsibility to teach not only students inclined to or gifted in mathematics.
So a good approach would be to select a reasonable text book or module appropriate for the grade level. However, this poses a problem. A teacher is quite busy teaching and does not have the luxury of time to think about choosing a suitable book or module.
Therefore, what you might want to do would be to encourage those persons in the school district involved with textbook selection
to become familiar with the findings in reports such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Project 2061 and to use those in making a textbook decision.
It has been observed - the reference will be supplied here as soon as we can locate it - that in each class session in school, the students must be introduced to one new concept. This could apply to classes exclusively for the gifted or others. Apart from this, here are eight things that you might consider doing:
- Teach the proper use of calculators
- Encourage the proper way of writing mathematics
- Engage students in problem solving
- Ensure that the school library has an ample supply of books and journal titles suitable for the gifted
- Conduct occasional class sessions playing video tapes or CD's explaining the big concepts of mathematics.
- Persuade the school to subscribe for you the suitable math journals
- Ask the school to send you to the regional/annual meetings of the NCTM
- Seek grants to attend summer institutes for middle school teachers
We will be posting here an expanded discussion on some of the eight themes listed above. The reason I am not writing more on them here is that the idea is not to promulgate my views but the views incorporating the collective wisdom of those worldwide engaged in the training of the gifted.
In what other ways can you promote the gifted? That is the goal of this page.
We invite you to write us with ideas. Some of you have been successful in producing a whole platoon of high-achieving students year after year. Your ideas
will help and motivate others. We also would like to know about suitable books, video tapes, CD's and web sites. For submissions, please see the webmaster address given on the bottom of the page.
(This note was written by George R. Thomas, Executive Director and founder of MathPath. Thomas is also founder and Executive Director Emeritus of Canada/USA Mathcamp, and a former associate professor of mathematics.)
