3 Tips for Teaching Gifted Students in Middle School ELA

Adapting plans and lessons for the diverse needs in your classroom is always tricky. In this post, we are providing three tips for teaching gifted students in middle school ELA.

Teaching advanced students can be both exciting and challenging. They often crave deeper understanding, more complex materials, and opportunities to explore subjects at a higher level.

Today, we are discussing three tips for teaching gifted students in middle school ELA. The goal is to provide teachers with options that utilize similar resources to what they are already using in the classroom; however, we will be applying them with a bit of a twist.

3 Tips for Teaching Gifted Students in Middle School ELA

As we introduce each of these tips, our main goal is for students to primarily use resources that the teacher is already utilizing in class, adapting them for the needs of gifted students. In some situations, such as in Tip #1, the resources may be similar, but we will use materials from a different grade level.

Tip #1 | Using Resources from the Next Grade Level

Our first tip is to use resources from the next grade level up. If your students are engaged in an activity that requires paired passages, and the majority are using passages from the 7th and 8th-grade reading levels, consider giving your advanced students paired passages rated for 9th grade instead.

By using resources from the next grade level, students receive a slightly modified, more challenging version of the same content. In subject areas like ELA, where students practice the same skills in various contexts, simply changing the reading level of the material can significantly increase the difficulty of the task.

When you are looking for resources, keep your eyes peeled for resources that come in combined grade levels like the bundles below. We also have bundles separated out for just the informational prompts OR just the argumentative prompts so you can grab exactly what you need!

Tip #2 | Same Content, Different Product

Another way to modify material for advanced or gifted students is to provide them with the same content but ask them to create a different product.

For example, if all your students are planning to write a short essay on whether junk food should be allowed in the classroom, the current expectation may be too easy for your gifted students.

Instead of writing a standard essay, challenge your gifted students to create a multimedia presentation on the topic. This could take the form of a PSA, a commercial, a newspaper article, or another creative presentation method that differs from a typical short essay. By changing the product, you encourage students to engage with the content in a new way. You can also provide them with less structure than you would typically offer, allowing them the opportunity to think creatively and innovate.

Tip #3 | Same Product, Different Lens

Lastly, in our three tips for teaching gifted students in middle school ELA, we will discuss having students produce the same product as their peers but approach it from a slightly different lens or for a different audience.

This means that if all the students are writing a short essay, that expectation remains for gifted students. The difference lies in the lens through which they approach their writing.

While most students might be paraphrasing and providing a short informational essay on the topic, your gifted students could write their essays with the intent of persuading a specific group to act on the issue.

Using the junk food example from earlier, the majority of your students may use paired passages about junk food as references to persuade their teacher regarding whether junk food should be allowed in the classroom. In contrast, the gifted students might use the same paired passages, but their essays are directed at persuading the school board to act on their recommendations. This approach requires the students to write with more focused intent, adopt a more professional tone, and be more mindful of their word choice.

By changing the lens or the audience, the product must be adapted to appeal to a different group of people or a new situation.

Learning From Experience

These three tips for teaching gifted students in middle school ELA come from experienced teachers who understand the challenges of differentiating for gifted students in the middle school ELA classroom.

Just as we differentiate for students who need additional help, gifted students also require differentiation that allows them to continue learning and progressing at the same rate as their peers.

We hope you can implement some of these tips for teaching gifted students in middle school ELA in your classroom and that they inspire even more strategies for working with your gifted students as you move forward and discover what they can achieve.

We have written other posts on this topic. Click on the image below to learn more!