Academic Acceleration For teachers, gifted coordinators, administrators, and parents. This 3 credit course is offered once a year through the University of Iowa Belin-Blank Center using an online format. For information about the course schedule and how to register, email acceleration@belinblank.org.

Questions and Answers section

"Acceleration is one of the most curious phenomena in the field of education. I can think of no other issue in which there is such a gulf between what research has revealed and what most practitioners believe. The research on acceleration is so uniformly positive, the benefits of appropriate acceleration so unequivocal, that it is difficult to see how an educator could oppose it."

2021 Minnesota Statutes

Gifted and talented children and youth are those students with outstanding abilities, identified at preschool, elementary, and secondary levels. The potential of gifted students requires differentiated and challenging educational programs or services beyond those provided in the general school program. Students capable of high performance include those with demonstrated achievement or potential ability in one or more of these areas: general intellectual, specific academic subjects, creativity, leadership, and visual/performing arts.

Resources for Educators, Schools and FamiliesAcceleration is an option for students who are academically advanced compared to peers in their age group. The Acceleration Institute website informs parents, educators, researchers and policymakers of the research and practices concerning academic acceleration. Visit the Acceleration Institute website. Developing Academic Acceleration Policies: Whole Grade, Early Entrance & Single Subject is a resource available to guide policymakers, school administrators, and educators to create or modify acceleration policies at the local level. View Developing Academic Policies: Whole Grade, Early Entrance & Single Subject. Sample whole grade acceleration procedure

Increasing Depth, Complexity, and RigorAnother way to develop curriculum for gifted learners is to incorporate greater depth, complexity, and rigor. You can achieve this through a variety of strategies. One simple method is to provide students with questions requiring a higher level of critical thinking. Discussion groups, such as Socratic seminars and fishbowl discussions, in which students explore such questions are particularly effective--you can ask your students to paraphrase their peers' responses and then add on or pose other questions.

Promote critical thinking and reasoning abilities. Develop and expand thinking skills. Utilize differentiated strategies for learning. Build or extend cognitive language skills. Facilitate opportunities for learning.

No matter where they obtain their education, they need an appropriately differentiated curriculum designed to address their individual characteristics, needs, abilities, and interests.

Content consists of ideas, concepts, descriptive information, and facts. Content, as well as learning experiences, can be modified through acceleration, compacting, variety, reorganization, flexible pacing, and the use of more advanced or complex concepts, abstractions, and materials.

To modify process, activities must be restructured to be more intellectually demanding.

excellent resource in helping teachers develop challenging curriculum for gifted and talented students in their classroom. The book is unique in that it focuses exclusively on curriculum development and is geared toward all grade levels. Three curriculum models are emphasized throughout the book and each is explained in detail in the first chapter.