How Does a PLN Work? RSS technology enables the students to create a PLN. The RSS button, often called a chicklet because of its resemblance to a piece of Chiclets chewing gum, contains all the programming required to add customized sources of news and information to a PLN with just a click. These buttons are on just about every blog, wiki, and mainstream media Web site.

I think the ability to create a PLN is a fundamental information-management skill that will help my students succeed in the future.

Like an empty locker, the RSS reader starts off as a blank Web page, and students must learn how to seek out sources of information to fill the page that will make up their research. The PLN is never complete, but it evolves to meet the changing needs of each individual project.

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IDENTIFICATION All middle school learners need educators who consistently use both formal and informal means of recognizing their particular strengths and needs. In regard to advanced learners, identification requires specific plans to seek out students with advanced abilities or advanced potential in order to provide appropriate educational experiences during the transition into adolescence.

ASSESSMENT Ongoing assessment is critical to informing classroom practice. Preassessment, in-process assessments, and post assessments should give learners consistent opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge, understanding, and skill related to topics of study. Assessments related to student readiness, interests, perspectives, and learning preferences provide educators with a consistently emerging understanding of each learner’s needs in the classroom. Middle level educators should use data from such assessments to modify teaching and learning plans to ensure that each student—including those who already perform well beyond expectations—have consistent opportunities to extend their abilities.

CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION

Advanced middle grade learners thus require consistent opportunities to work at degrees of challenge somewhat beyond their particular readiness levels, with support necessary to achieve at the new levels of proficiency. In addition, educators should address student interests and preferred modes of learning in planning curriculum and instruction that is appropriately challenging for individual learners. Educational resources should be of a sufficient range of complexity to ensure challenge for advanced learners. Flexible pacing and flexible grouping arrangements are important instructional adjustments for many highly able middle level learners.

AFFECTIVE DEVELOPMENT

Students benefit greatly from learning environments that reinforce their worth as individuals and simultaneously support them in becoming more powerful and productive. For advanced learners, this may require helping students affirm both their abilities and their need to belong to a peer group. Middle level educators need to understand and address the unique dynamics that high-ability and high-potential young adolescents may experience as they seek to define themselves and their roles among peers.

EFFECTIVE PARTNERSHIPS Building a middle school culture that supports equity and excellence for each learner requires sustained attention to partnerships among all adults key to the student’s development. This includes partnerships between home and school, specialists and generalists, and teachers and administrators. Middle level schools should assist parents in recognizing, understanding, and nurturing advanced abilities and potential in young adolescents. Partnerships among team members and between classroom teachers and gifted education specialists should ensure appropriate challenge for advanced learners and appropriate attention to the particular talents of advanced learners. Administrator/teacher partnerships should define what it means to accommodate the individual needs of learners and develop conditions that lead to such accommodations for all middle level learners—including those who demonstrate advanced performance or potential.

PRE-SERVICE AND IN-SERVICE STAFF DEVELOPMENT

Teachers with training in gifted education are more likely to foster high-level thinking, allow for greater student expression, consider individual variance in their teaching, and understand how to provide high-end challenge. Appropriate staff development for middle level teachers will continually focus on high-quality curriculum, understanding and teaching in response to individual as well as group needs, and developing a repertoire of instructional strategies that support and manage flexible classrooms. Central to the success of these endeavors is shared responsibility for meeting the needs of each learner, evidenced in systematic and consistent planning, carrying out of plans, and evaluation of effectiveness of plans in terms of individual learners and small groups of learners as well as the class as a whole.

Teachers, Gifted Education Specialists, and Support Personnel Should: 1. Be knowledgeable about students with advanced academic abilities and those who have the potential to work at advanced levels. 2. Meet regularly to discuss the needs of all students, including those with high ability. 3. Provide curriculum, instruction, and other opportunities to meet the needs of students with high ability. 4. Use a variety of developmentally appropriate instructional practices to enable each student to experience a high degree of personal excellence. 5. Collaborate with colleagues at elementary and high school levels to ensure a smooth transition as students progress throughout the grades. 6. Keep parents informed about their children’s growth and invite parent participation in educational planning for their children.