Teachingisagift: Gifted Education 101: Differentiation Through Process

In the?second post in this series, I wrote about how teachers of gifted students can differentiate programming through content. Content differentiation is often the most common form of differentiation. ?It along with product differentiation are also the most obvious and visible forms of differentiation. ?These forms of differentiation are things which observers might?SEE if they were examining the differences between a gifted and "regular" program. ? Another very important part of planning for teaching gifted students is?differentiation?through process. Process is defined as:?

• cognitive and affective thinking skills,?
• learning how to learn,?
• research and reference skills,?
• written, oral and visual communications skills.

The Toronto District School board Special Education Department created a flow chart to demonstrate how its teachers could differentiate the program for gifted students through process.

The first part of the flow chart looks at RESEARCH SKILLS.

Research consists of the following skills and competencies:

Organizational Skills: Time Management, Personal Work Space, Planning and Task Completion

Experiential Learning Skills: Hypothesize, Validate, Observe, Big Idea, Assess

Inquiry Skills: Sources of Information, Referencing Information, Selecting/Categorizing Information, Point form notes, Communication, Use of Graphs/Charts

Independent Study Skills: ?Organization/Time Management, Problem Solving, Research, Presentation, Independence/Motivation

The second part?examines AWARENESS OF SELF & OTHERS.

Awareness of Self & Others?consists of the following skills and competencies:
Interpersonal Learning Skills: Contribution, Tolerance/Accepting of Differences, Listening, Working with others, Problem Solving
Self-Directed Learning Skills: Goal Setting, Self-Regulation, Strategic Planning, Engagement, Motivation, Self-Direction
Leadership: Role Model, Responsibility, Goal Setting, Communication, Student Led Participation, Activities
Intrapersonal Skills: Reflection, Self-Knowledge, Self-Discovery, Self-Esteem, Metacognition

The final section of the flow chart focuses on THINKING SKILLS.

Thinking consists of the following skills and competencies:

Critical Thinking Skills: Gather information, Evaluate Evidence, Consider Alternatives/Implications, Choose/Implement best alternative

Creative Thinking Skills: Generation of Ideas, Combining of Ideas, Analysis of Ideas, Evaluating Ideas

Problem Solving Skills: ?Developing Solutions, Creativity, Persistence Organization, Analysis and Applications

Creativity: Fluency, Flexibility, Elaboration, Originality, Application?

I don't know about you, but when I first encountered this flow chart I was TOTALLY OVERWHELMED! ?There are 3 areas, 12 skills and a GAZILLION competencies (61 actually)! ?The good news is that there is a lot of overlap within each of these areas, and if you start to think about it, the skills outlined can also be effectively integrated with the content and product part of the program.

In Toronto, we are into the second year of implementation of the areas outlined in the flow chart above. At our school we are continuing to explore how to best use this information to program for the gifted students in the intensive support program. ?I am by no means an expert at any of the areas listed, but I have learned a lot as I continue to work my way through it. ?In our school we focus on all the three areas each year, but we have a specific concentration on ONE area in each of the three grades. ?The grade fours concentrate on RESEARCH, the grade fives concentrate on THINKING and the grade sixes concentrate on AWARENESS OF SELF & OTHERS.

As a starting point for the upcoming year, teachers of gifted may want to focus on organization skills with their students. ?Most students need help with?organization?skills to one extent or another and the beginning of the year is a great time to set expectations and goals.

Please download a copy of this Organization Rubric as a FREEBIE. ??You can use it to demonstrate the criteria for your students and then help them work towards success.

In upcoming posts in this series I will focus on each of the areas outlined above and explore some ways you can design a program to help meet the needs of the gifted students you teach.

Source: http://teachingisagift.blogspot.com/2013/07/gifted-education-101-differentiation.html

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Pope says gays should not be marginalized

By Philip Pullella

ROME (Reuters) - Pope Francis, in some of the most conciliatory words from any pontiff on gays, said they should not be judged or marginalized and should be integrated into society, but he reaffirmed Church teaching that homosexual acts are a sin.

In a broad-ranging 80-minute conversation with journalists on the plane bringing him back from a week-long visit to Brazil, Francis also said the Roman Catholic Church's ban on women priests was definitive, although he would like them to have more leadership roles in administration and pastoral activities.

He expressed pain over scandals at the Vatican bank during a remarkably forthright press conference, his first since being elected in March to replace Benedict XVI, who became the first pontiff to resign in 600 years.

Francis said there were saints in the Holy See but also "those who are not very saintly".

The airborne encounter with journalists ranged over issues as varied as the pope's insistence on low-key security to his desire to slip out of the shackles of the Vatican to go for walks.

The pope arrived back in Rome on Monday after a triumphant week-long tour of Brazil which climaxed with a huge gathering on Rio de Janeiro's famed Copacabana beach for a world Catholic youth festival, which organizers estimated to have attracted more than 3 million people.

Francis defended gays from discrimination but also referred to the Catholic Church's universal Catechism, which says that while homosexual orientation is not sinful homosexual acts are.

"If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?" the pope said.

"The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says they should not be marginalized because of this (orientation) but that they must be integrated into society," he said, speaking in Italian.

"The problem is not having this orientation. We must be brothers. The problem is lobbying by this orientation, or lobbies of greedy people, political lobbies, Masonic lobbies, so many lobbies. This is the worse problem," he said.

Francis was answering a question about reports of a "gay lobby" in the Vatican, after it suffered a string of scandals over pedophile priests and corruption in the administration of the Holy See.

"You see a lot written about the gay lobby. I still have not seen anyone in the Vatican with an identity card saying they are gay," he joked.

'NO' TO WOMEN PRIESTS IS DEFINITIVE

Addressing the issue of women priests, the pope said, "The Church has spoken and says 'no' ... that door is closed." It was the first time he had spoken in public on the subject.

"We cannot limit the role of women in the Church to altar girls or the president of a charity, there must be more ...," he said in answer to a question.

"But with regards to the ordination of women, the Church has spoken and says 'no'. Pope John Paul said so with a formula that was definitive. That door is closed," he said, referring to a document by the late pontiff which said the ban was part of the infallible teaching of the Church.

The Church teaches that it cannot ordain women because Jesus willingly chose only men as his apostles. Advocates of a female priesthood say he was acting according to the customs of his times.

Many in the Church, even those who oppose a female priesthood, say women should be given leadership roles in the Church and the Vatican administration.

The long session on the plane was highly unusual in the history of the modern papacy for both its candor and breadth.

Unlike his predecessor Benedict, who knew in advance the few questions journalists would allowed to ask, 76-year-old Francis, who as an Argentine was the first non-European pope in 1,300 years, imposed no restrictions as he fielded 21 questions.

He said his week-long trip to Brazil left him very fatigued but "did me a lot of spiritual good".

He spoke of reforms he had begun in the Vatican, which has been tarnished by a series of corruption scandals, including at the Vatican bank, which is the target of several Italian money laundering investigations.

Francis said the bank must become "honest and transparent" and that he will listen to the advice of a commission he has set up on whether it can be reformed or should be closed altogether.

Francis referred directly to Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, a Vatican prelate arrested last month on suspicion of attempting to smuggle 20 million euros into Italy from Switzerland.

"There are many people (in the Vatican) who are saints but there are those who are not very saintly ... and it pains me when this happens. There is this monsignor in jail. He didn't go to jail because he resembled a saint ... these are scandals that do damage," he said.

Francis, who in Brazil chose to ride in an open-sided popemobile or a simple Fiat, said he was not concerned about the reduced security he has chosen compared to his predecessors.

"Security lies in trusting people. It is true that there is always a danger that a crazy person might try to do something, but there is also the Lord," he said, adding that he believed it would be even more crazy to be kept away from people.

Vatican security was greatly boosted after Pope John Paul was shot and nearly killed by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca on May 13, 1981 while he was riding in an open jeep in St. Peter's Square.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; editing by Barry Moody and Mike Collett-White)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pope-says-gays-must-not-judged-marginalized-110838664.html

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Israelis, Palestinians start arguing even before peace talks start

By Dan Williams and Ali Sawafta, Reuters

JERUSALEM/RAMALLAH, West Bank - Israeli and Palestinian officials put forward clashing formats for peace talks due to resume in Washington on Monday for the first time in nearly three years after intense U.S. mediation.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is due to bring the negotiators together in the evening and on Tuesday to renew talks that broke down in 2010 over Israel's settlement of occupied land where Palestinians seek a state.

Previous attempts to resolve the decades-old conflict had sought to ward off deadlock and the risk of knock-on violence by tackling easier disputes first and deferring the most emotional ones like the fate of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees.

This time "all of the issues that are at the core of a permanent accord will be negotiated simultaneously," Silvan Shalom, a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu's cabinet and rightist Likud party, told Israel's Army Radio.

The Palestinians, with international backing, want their future state to have borders approximating the boundaries of the West Bank, adjacent East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip before Israel captured them in the 1967 Middle East war.

Yasser Abed Rabbo, a top official in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's umbrella Palestine Liberation Organisation, said the U.S. letter of invitation to the Washington talks had not specified which disputes were to be discussed.

But Abed Rabbo told Voice of Palestine radio the talks "will begin, in principle, on the issues of borders and security."

Netanyahu had resisted Abbas's calls to accept the 1967 border formula before talks resumed. Shalom said that the Israeli position would help keep the talks, which are slated to last nine months, comprehensive.

"Had the matter of borders and territory been given over, what incentive would they (Palestinians) have had to make concessions on the matter of refugees or Jerusalem?" Shalom asked.

Israel deems all of Jerusalem its capital - a status rejected internationally - and wants to keep West Bank settlement blocs under any peace accord. It quit Gaza in 2005 and that enclave is now ruled by Hamas Islamists hostile to the Jewish state and opposed to Abbas's peace strategy.

Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war at Israel's founding, along with millions of their descendants, claim the right to return to their original homes in what is now Israel. The Israelis rule that out as demographic suicide, saying the refugees should resettle in a future Palestine or elsewhere.

Netanyahu says any peace accord must safeguard Israel, which has often clashed with Hamas in Gaza and fears the Islamist movement could gain ground in the West Bank. Kerry has also described Israel's security as ?paramount.?

Abed Rabbo said Israel and the United States had been conferring about security without including the Palestinians.

"This is a big shortcoming in the Israeli and the American behavior because they are not discussing their bilateral security, they are discussing a central and a fundamental issue of ours and it concerns our future as a whole," he said.

After months of intensive and discreet mediation, Kerry announced on July 19 in Amman, Jordan, that the parties had laid the groundwork to resume negotiations on the so-called "final status" issues that must be resolved to end the dispute.

"The meetings in Washington will mark the beginning of these talks," Kerry spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. "They will serve as an opportunity to develop a procedural work plan for how the parties can proceed with the negotiations in the coming months."

In what it dubbed a goodwill gesture required to restart diplomacy, the Israeli cabinet on Sunday approved the release of 104 long-serving Palestinian security prisoners in stages. Thousands more Palestinians remain in Israeli jails.

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Brick Lane Gallery (Bethnal Green, London, by Cracker43)

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Offensive content?

Review of Brick Lane Gallery from 28 July 2013

This is a vanity gallery and spams as many artists as possible to pay the salaries and rentals. They claim to promote your work, but you will only get FB,twitter, if at all.there were no press, no media nor anyone of importance at the opening night, as we're promised in their emails to me, ?1600 later with no sales, I realise I was conned, considering my works were hung in a basement!

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? Qype 2013 - Review of Brick Lane Gallery by Cracker43 Made with Love in Hamburg, Germany

Source: http://www.qype.co.uk/review/3931387

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Bride, best man missing in boat crash on Hudson River; one body found

Katherine Craeg / NBC New York

By Tracy Jarrett, Writer, NBC News

One body has been found in the water after a bride-to-be and a best man went missing when a boat crashed into a barge on the Hudson River on Friday night, officials said.

Four other people remained in the hospital Saturday while investigators continued their search, NBC New York reported.

A woman's body was discovered adrift and without a life jacket not far south of the bridge, Rockland County Undersheriff Robert Van Cura said as a press conference on Saturday.?Police will continue searching for a missing male body.

The Coast Guard said six people?were on a 21-foot Stingray near Piermont, N.Y., when it hit the barge at around 10:40 p.m. local time on Friday evening in the vicinity of the Tappan Zee Bridge.

The accident happened shortly after the boat left Piermont for a short trip across the river to Tarrytown, Rockland County Sheriff's Department Chief William Barbera said at a news conference on Saturday morning, according to the Associated Press.

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"While the Rockland County Sheriff, N.Y. State Police and U.S. Coast Guard continue to investigate this tragic incident, the New York State Thruway Authority is conducting its own review of safety procedures on the Hudson River as part of the New NY Bridge Project,? said Brian Conybeare, special advisor to the governor, in a statement.

The woman, identified by family members as Lindsey Stewart, 30, was to get married on Aug. 10, and the man, identified as Mark Lennon, was supposed to be the best man in the wedding, relatives told NBC New York.

?Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families during this difficult time," Conybeare added.

Groom-to-be?Brian Bond, 36, is among the four injured passengers, who were described as suffering severe injuries, including head trauma and broken bones. Bond is in ?fair? condition at Westchester Medical Center, according to spokesman David Billing.?

Some of those?injured are awake and providing information to investigators. Bond, however, is currently unable to speak due to his injuries, Walter Kosik, the bride?s stepfather told NBC New York.

Police said that while it would have been dark in the area at the time of the crash, the barge was lit up.

"At this point, Tappan Zee Constructors, LLC, has reported to the Thruway Authority that all Coast Guard lighting requirements were met and that the barges were properly lit Friday night. All lighting was checked Saturday morning and is fully operational at all barge locations associated with the project,? Conybeare said in the statement.

Related:

This story was originally published on Sat Jul 27, 2013 3:53 PM EDT

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Violent clashes between Egyptian security and Morsi supporters

At least 38 protesters have died and 180 have been wounded as Egyptian security forces clashed with supporters of Egypt's ousted President Mohammed Morsi.

By Sarah el Deeb,?Associated Press / July 27, 2013

Supporters of deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi throw stones at police from behind a barricade during clashes in Nasr city area, east of Cairo July 27, 2013.

REUTERS/Asmaa Waguih

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Clashes erupted early Saturday in Cairo between security forces and supporters of Egypt's ousted President Mohammed Morsi, killing at least 38 protesters and overwhelming field hospitals with the wounded, a medic said, in an outburst of violence that deepens the battle lines in the country's political crisis.

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Health Ministry spokesman Khaled el-Khateeb told The Associated Press that a government hospital near the clashes has received 21 dead and 180 wounded so far. The difference in death tolls could not be immediately reconciled.

The carnage overnight near the month-old sit-in held by Morsi's supporters is likely to harden the resolve of the deposed leader's camp, who described the latest bloodshed as a "massacre." On the other side of the political divide, the military-backed interim leadership appears to feel emboldened to move against Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood following mass rallies on Friday in support of a crackdown against the ousted president and his Islamist allies.

The clashes began after hundreds of Morsi supporters moved out of their sit-in outside of the Rabaah al-Adawiyah Mosque in east Cairo late Friday. One group began to set up tents on an adjoining boulevard, where they planned to stay for at least three days, said Mahmoud Zaqzouq, a Brotherhood spokesman. At the same time, another group of protesters marched toward a nearby overpass, where they were met by volleys of tear gas from the police. The demonstrators responded by hurling rocks and stones at the security forces.

The confrontation quickly turned bloody. At first, doctors said half a dozen were killed in the clashes, mostly by birdshots and some live ammunition. At the crack of dawn, the pace of casualties picked up and a nearby field hospital was unable to cope with the influx, according to Yehia Mikkia, a doctor at the makeshift facility. He said hundreds were wounded.

Mikkia, the field hospital doctor, said 38 people had been killed, and that most of the casualties had wounds to the upper part of the body. He said the number of dead is likely to be higher because other casualties were transported to different hospitals.

At the makeshift morgue at the sit-in, supporters chanted "The people want to execute the butcher," referring to army chief and Defense Minster Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, as they ushered the dead out to the hospitals.

In footage broadcast on Al-Jazeera Mubashir Misr TV, the bodies of more than 12 men shrouded in white cloth were laid out on the floor of the field hospital. Pools of blood colored the floor red.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/3rOeqgt4zYQ/Violent-clashes-between-Egyptian-security-and-Morsi-supporters

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Sen. Bob Duff: Norwalk To See Benefits From Energy Bill

DARIEN, Conn. ? New energy legislation signed by Gov. Dannel Malloy on Monday will benefit residents of Darien as well as all of Fairfield County, according to state Sen. Bob Duff (D-25th District).

The comprehensive energy strategy legislation is designed to restructure the state?s support for renewable sources of electricity, expand access to natural gas and provide cheaper, cleaner and more reliable energy throughout the region and the state.

?I am very proud of the work we have done this year to make the state?s energy supply cleaner, cheaper and more reliable,? Duff said in a statement. The senator, who represents Norwalk and Darien, joined Malloy and other officials Monday at a ceremony at the Capitol in Hartford where Malloy signed the bills into law.

?Every home and business in Connecticut requires energy on a daily basis, making the affordability of energy essential to the health of our state?s economy. There will now be more affordable and alternative energy options available than ever before, and efforts to conserve or be more efficient in the use of energy will have an even greater pay-off.?

Duff serves as the state Senate?s chairman of the Energy & Technology Committee with co-chair state Rep. Lonnie Reed (D-102nd District), whom he thanked ? with Malloy ? for General Assembly?s success in moving the legislation forward.

The laws incentivize businesses and homeowners to weatherize their facilities and homes and to make equipment upgrades. They also promote renewable energy ?through low interest financing and advanced metering technology.?

Additionally, the laws also facilitate tree trimming to make Connecticut?s electric grid more reliable during major storms and make converting to cleaner, cheaper natural gas an more affordable proposition for homeowners and businesses.

The bills also reaffirm the state?s goal to derive 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020 and makes it easier for the state to harness competitively priced hydropower and slowly begin to reduce support for biomass and landfill gas generated energy plants.

Source: http://norwalk.dailyvoice.com/politics/sen-bob-duff-darien-see-benefits-energy-bill

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