October 2nd
Asking kids that are labeled as Gifted and Talented to work in groups is a consistently difficult task. Along with researching this on my own, as well as compiling my own experiences as a Gifted and Talented student who has an incredibly difficult time making sure to slow down when working with others, the true scholarly source on the matter was, of course, my own mother. She put it simply, saying:
“You’re in a room made up of entire Type A students. Cooperation is hard when you know your idea is the best idea, and that thought is in the heads of 19 other kids.”
Thus, I was met with the challenge of knowing pretty quickly that my next activity was going to be a bit more difficult than I had imagined. They were going to be tasked with studying a particular type of Mediterranean ecosystem, then listing some animals native to the space and the specific adaptations those animals have to survive. Then, they would combine the best features to make a mythical monster, in the style of other creatures from myth like the Chimera.
I explained to them the assignment, gave them their handout, and randomized the students into five groups. As there were only five girls compared to 15 boys, I did feel a small bit guilty by randomizing them. I worried their voices might be overshadowed.
Both my mother and I learned something incredibly important to my work as early as my second day in the room with the students: when a classroom is given the ability to work creatively, they do not compete to have the correct answer. To be honest, I was expecting my exercise to be a lesson in natural adaptation, but also in conflict resolution and communication. Instead, by giving the students an exercise that was not based on a letter grade or formulaic right or wrong, they invented their own systems of representation and fairness.
For example, my group working on the Ocean ecosystem began by doing the assignment entirely on their own. One of them created an otter-shark-fish hybrid, another a dolphin-turtle-jellyish, etc. Then, and entirely on their own accord, they each stood up, rotated one seat to the right, and circled a feature on the person’s animal.
“Whatcha up to?” I asked.
“Voting.” One of the girls said, circling the fish fin on a partner’s paper. The boy next to her circled the turtle shell on her animal.
“On what? How does this work?” They rotated as I was talking to them.
“Well, we wanted to have an animal where all of our drawings were in it. So we’re each picking our favorite feature on each creature we drew. Then, whichever feature on our paper has the most votes gets put on the final drawing.”
Needless to say, I was absolutely stunned. By the end, they’d created a family of turtle-dolphin-otter-sharks that was absolutely adorable and perfectly adapted to the environment they were given, including a listed reason for each adaptation they chose. The turtle feature was a shell, to protect it from predators, the dolphin tail was for speed to catch prey, and down the list it went.
Every group functioned like this to some degree or another. One group decided to split up the work, letting the girl who was obsessed with drawing animals get to create the final masterpiece, while every other member of the group got to choose a feature to add. One group asked to use the computer to do research, voting yea or neah as I showed them various types of bugs to find the perfect set of antenna for their creature.
Because they weren’t being asked to find a correct answer, they were also more than willing to explain to me why they picked what they chose, citing evidence from their real life experiences. The boy with the farm explained to me how strong goat hooves are. The girl who’s favorite animal is a pig told me facts about how strong their noses are. Sure, they didn’t write all of it down, but in asking them to prove their knowledge by doing, they certainly did.
