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Thinking Skills of the Gifted

Q: What are the levels of thinking for special children particularly the gifted? What are the ways in determining their levels of thinking? What are the limitations of the thinking of special children?

A: For gifted children, they usually use higher levels of thinking skills in any form of their learning. If taught these skills, they are able to think creatively, to analyze, synthesize, apply and evaluate information. The teaching of thinking skills provides children with a means of associating different areas of knowledge and developing skills that can be applied across the curriculum. This may differ from an average child who may think at the lower levels on a taxonomy (e.g., Bloom's Taxonomy which is a model for conceptualizing higher level thinking skills). The main difference is that the ability to jump to higher levels of thinking is faster for gifted children.

To determine their thinking levels would depend on the subject being taught. The teacher needs to decide the level of thinking for her/his students. This can be done using, say, the Bloom Taxonomy. Bloom's Taxonomy is a classification of thinking skills with six different levels, with each successive level increasing in complexity. The first three levels: Knowledge, Comprehension and Application are often referred to as lower level thinking, while the second three levels: Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation are referred to as higher level thinking. Gifted children are more likely to use the higher levels of thinking.

The teaching of thinking skills should be enhanced when the child is very young to form habits of the mind. This is particular significant when looking at the needs of preschool and children in their first years of school. The older one grows, the harder it is to change the way a person is thinking; however not impossible. There is no limitation in terms of thinking for gifted children. In fact, there are activities to develop thinking skills such as simple strategies of open-ended questions to brain-storming sessions, further advancing to specific skills such as comparisons, classification. concept mapping, cause and effect, to structures such as Six Thinking Hats, Creative Problem Solving, Future Problem Solving, Bloom's Taxonomy and CoRT.

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