Trainings

1st LTTA

Participants performed practical tasks that are given to gifted children in order to determine their level of giftedness based on the quality of their performance in a limited time.

Afterwards, there was a practical task: involving a psychologist and a client, the psychologist presents pictures showing shoes and headgear, after the client chooses one card with the desired shoes and another with a headgear, he has to explain why he chose it, and the psychologist has to ask open-ended questions questions aimed at finding out as much as possible about the client’s psychological and emotional state.

After the lunch break, the lecturer spoke and invited everyone to discuss about gifted children with atypical behavior. During the discussion, we talked about situations, how to properly treat gifted children and what we can expect from them. In conclusion, it was said that not all the problems have solutions. At the end of the first day of the training, a reflection was carried out: during the reflection, the participants discussed what they had learned during the training.

Venue: Kaunas, Lithuania

Leading organization: Vytautas Magnus University

Period: 17-21 October 2022

Day 1:

Participants performed practical tasks that are given to gifted children in order to determine their level of giftedness based on the quality of their performance in a limited time.  

Afterwards, there was a practical task: involving a psychologist and a client, the psychologist presents pictures showing shoes and headgear, after the client chooses one card with the desired shoes and another with a headgear, he has to explain why he chose it, and the psychologist has to ask open-ended questions  questions aimed at finding out as much as possible about the client’s psychological and emotional state.  

After the lunch break, the lecturer spoke and invited everyone to discuss about gifted children with atypical behavior.  During the discussion, we talked about situations, how to properly treat gifted children and what we can expect from them.  In conclusion, it was said that not all the problems have solutions.  

At the end of the first day of the training, a reflection was carried out: during the reflection, the participants discussed what they had learned during the training.

Day 2:

In the meeting of the second day, the lecturer presented information about the foundation of the adequate teacher for gifted children and what are the main characteristics of the teacher background and education,  models identifying the effective teacher.  

Later, the lecturer gave up his workplace to the project participants: each participant had to present one of the lecturer’s slides and explain in their own words how they understand the statement.  After lunch break, all the participants discussed what the professional and didactic abilities of the teacher should be.  Towards the end of the meeting, the participants of the project were introduced to what should be the understanding and application of gifted classroom.  

And finally, at the end of the training day, there was a reflection: during the reflection, the participants discussed what they learned during the second training day. 

Day 3:

The meeting of the third day began with getting to know the new lecturers of the training project.  Lecturer Dr.  Ofer Keren during the first lecture introduced teaching methods and strategies for teachers of gifted students.  He mentioned that it is very essential to choose correct strategies because it contributes significantly to building the environment.  Dr.  Ofer Keren presented the conclusion: all along, we must remember that there is no gifted teaching without adjusting the curriculum.  Later, the lecture was extended by two new lecturers: Shiri Lev-Ari & Tali Lacks-Zur.  They demonstrated one of the methods in a practical way, which is called the jigsaw method.  Chocolate and certain cards with words were distributed to all project participants.  

Participants had to come up with questions about chocolate, but in the question they had to mention the word they got with the card.  After writing all the questions, they were divided into several different topics.  Later, the lecturers divided the participants into as many groups as there were different topics.  There had to be as many people in the group as there were groups.  Each group searched for information on their assigned topic.  

And later, the group members had to pass the information to the other group members while going to other groups.  The rest of the time was spent on lesson planning and reflection of the day. 

Day 4:

The fourth day of training was devoted to feedback presentations of project participants.  It was planned that each teacher using the knowledge gained in the previous days, had to prepare a lesson plan for gifted classroom or classroom where gifted pupils learn.  Each participant got the feedback, suggestions from lecturers, as well as all Teacher’s questions were answered.  At the end of the day, a reflection was carried out, during which it was discussed how well the participants prepared, using the knowledge gained in the previous days.

Day 5:

Friday’s meeting started with lecturer familiarization with the holistic-cognitive approach to teaching gifted children and the social emotional approach to teaching gifted children.  During the short break, the project participants got acquainted with the premises of the gifted center.  Later, all project participants discussed what the structure of a curriculum adequate for gifted children should look like.  And at the end of the training, a reflection was held, during which the project participants shared their impressions from the whole week.