The Center for Talent Development welcomes back Dr. Joyce VanTassel-Baska to lead a day-long educator’s workshop. “Common Core State Standards: Let’s Make Them Work for Gifted!” will be held on Saturday, October 13, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the Evanston, IL campus of Northwestern University.
The seminar is a “must attend” for gifted coordinators, teachers and school administrators intent on making the new CCSS benefit all students, including those with exceptional ability.
Apart from founding the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University more than 30 years ago, Dr. VanTassel-Baska has earned an international reputation for her expertise in curriculum for gifted students. Since retiring from the College of William & Mary three years ago, she has been more active than ever. Ranking high among current projects is a commitment to help schools across the country develop and implement curricula around the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
In a recently updated interview conducted by the College of William & Mary, Dr. VanTassel-Baska shares some perspective on gifted curriculum and the opportunity the CCSS present to raise the bar on differentiated learning.
When developed two decades ago, her signature
Integrated Curriculum Model, combined three existing approaches to organizing curriculum for gifted students: 1) advanced content, 2) enrichment and 3) interdisciplinary components that involved concepts, issues and/or themes.
“My underlying thesis was always that we could get a richer curriculum if we utilized all three as opposed to utilizing only one approach,” says Dr. VanTassel-Baska. “This model has worked quite well over the past twenty years to design differentiated curriculum and to link the work to content standards. It has proven quite durable as well as the organizing framework for new curriculum designed around the Common Core State Standards.”
She lays out what gifted educators must do to leverage the opportunity created by CCSS. “The new CCSS will be viewed as national standards with national assessment developing quickly as well. No longer will we have 50 separate (state) iterations of what students need to know and be able to do and how to validate that. While the new standards are high level in some respects, they still require differentiation for gifted learners. Gifted education as a professional field must align its own new standards in curriculum, instruction and assessment to this new common core by subject area to ensure that gifted learners are well-served in schools.”
The full interview with Dr. VanTassel-Baska is available at
http://education.wm.edu/centers/cfge/the-bridge-newsletterSpring2012/Interview%20with%20Joyce%20VanTassel-Baska,%20Ed.D./index.php
Visit
CTD website for complete conference and registration information.
