Gifted Students and Reading Instruction-- What's the Answer?

Children who fit within that category of learners often known as 'gifted and talented' can often find reading a challenge, just as those students who struggle to read at all do. The problem for gifted and talented children however, is not one of a lack of ability to read. Rather, it is a problem of finding appropriate, interesting and meaningful content to enjoy reading and learning from it. Just as a student who struggles to read will find decoding text and reading with fluency and skill sufficient for good comprehension, so too does a gifted and talented child run into trouble if they are attempting books which are related to topics well outside their experiences, interest areas or are about issues which are inappropriate for a child of their age to read.

Teachers can be guided by reading recovery levels to a certain extent. Reading recovery levels tell the reader (and teacher) roughly what level of reader should be able to manage the book. Often children in their first year of school will be reading at around Reading Recovery Levels 1-10, and from around 11-20 in their second year. The problem for gifted and talented children is often that they begin school already capable readers, and so are quickly moved into reading recovery level books which are written with a much older child in mind. For example, a child who is aged 5 may be given a book with a reading recovery level of 20. This book is likely to be about topics which are outside the child's experience, or which relates to themes which are normally considered and discussed by children who are aged 7 or 8.

There are several ways to approach the problem of suitable reading instruction for gifted students. One is to use reading recovery levels as a guide but also pay close attention to the book descriptions to ensure the content is suitable. Another is to use a range of text types (non fiction books about topics of interest, newspapers, magazines, journals and web pages, as well as atlases and dictionaries) to provide additional sources of reading instruction for a gifted child. Gifted students can also be encouraged to extend their learning in a wider range of directions from a single text compared with their peers. Another useful solution is to check out some second hand book stores and look for older fiction texts that sometimes have a larger vocabulary and more complex sentence structures than more recent texts, and are aimed at younger readers. For example, 'Little Women' or 'Seven Little Australians' or 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' can be used. Classic stories such as 'Moby Dick' often have abridged versions available which can also be useful. There are often extensive fiction book lists available online through gifted education organizations.

Source: information is from author experience.