Giftedness

Running head : Giftedness

Enrichment versus Acceleration

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Enrichment versus Acceleration

Gifted children really need special attention . Many people don 't understand them and usually ignore their advanced intellectual and academic abilities . As a result , they end up as school drop-outs or anything worse . What these children need are specialized education system and emotional support

For the specialized educational system , there are two approaches enrichment , also known as horizontal curriculum expansion , and acceleration , also known as

vertical curriculum expansion ' The two approaches differ a lot in terms of application methods and benefits . However , the effectiveness of these approaches in helping the gifted children is still in question . Each has its own set of pros and cons . For the enrichment approach , the gifted child is given a curriculum that is based on the curriculum of the grade level he or she belongs but it has many additional requirements , thus expanding their knowledge horizontally ' The cons of this approach include the fact that the gifted children usually learned things way ahead of schedule meaning they may have already understood the lessons for the given grade level . Learning it again could be boring for them and they may end up as school drop-outs . For the acceleration approach , students are given educational materials that are part of the curriculum for older students . This means that the student can move at his /her own pace through individualized course material , test out of any unit with a high enough score on a unit pre-test , take above-level coursework in the age-level classroom , move to a higher grade-level class for one or more subjects , and skip one or more grades ' The cons of this approach include the need for an individualized curriculum which requires more resources (i .e . teacher , fund . Also , the gifted student is pressured to achieve a lot and when they fail , they usually suffer great depression and worse can happen

Talking about the effectiveness of the two approaches , the acceleration approach could prove a lot more effective than the rather boring enrichment approach . Our group supports the acceleration approach as it is more effective but has low risk of failure . We already know of the fact that gifted children are accelerated learners . What they need is an accelerated curriculum , and of course , emotional support . The enrichment approach is clearly not the best approach to handle gifted children However , this approach could be proven useful if the student has more memory to record the variations of the same s being discussed but are presented in different ways References

About Us ' Retrieved 4 May 2008 , from HYPERLINK "http /www .tip .duke .edu /about /index .html http /www .tip .duke .edu /about /index .html

Gifted Program ' Retrieved 4 May 2008 , from HYPERLINK "http /www .bluevalleyk12 .org /EdServices /student_services /enrichment .cfm http /www .bluevalleyk12 .org /EdServices /student_services /enrichment .cfm

Kauffman , D . Horizontal enrichment versus vertical acceleration Retrieved 4 May 2008 , from HYPERLINK "http /www .hoagiesgifted .org /enrichment...