The prompt you see here is one of many creative ideas shared on social media recently by the Tennessee Association for the Gifted (TAG). Have you seen them?
Teachers are LOVING them, and so am I, and I wanted to learn more about the team producing them. It turns out, a vast majority of the posts are written by one dedicated teacher, quietly sharing “behind the scenes” in weekly posts with titles such as “Steal It Sunday, Use It Monday,” “Wacky Wednesday,” and “Fun Friday.”
The picture gives the general idea, but the post includes details about how to do the activity with students.
Check out the reactions of teachers in this sampling of comments under this one post.
- “All the ideas y’all crank out? Kinda makes me wanna move to TN.
– C.S. - “Used this Friday. My learners came up with the best answers!”
– M.R. - “Thank you for sharing ways to improve our teaching with gifted students! LOVE each idea you post.” – M.B.
- “My students love Tribond-style questions. This is entirely the NEXT level! Wow! Thank you for sharing this activity that is going to unlock some great conversations!” – K.C.
THE TEACHER BEHIND THE SCENES
Amy Smith is the amazing middle-school educator producing this great content and generously sharing activities that have worked well with her students. Amy has been an active participant in our BILS FB discussion group for years and an enthusiastic cheerleader for me personally, so I was stunned to learn that she is composing most of the TAG posts.
And that’s not all. Amy has also been working on developing tools and strategies to help students who struggle with perfectionism. Some of those ideas show up in posts about social-emotional learning and executive functioning skills.
A lot of great things come out of Tennessee (shout out to Stephanie Higgs, “Little Miss Gifted!”). Turns out, Stephanie’s elementary students feed into Amy’s middle school, and Amy says Stephanie “is always willing to listen to an idea, help me figure out Canva or social media, or just be an encouraging friend.” In the profile at the end of this post, you can learn more about Amy and her journey to now serving as Secretary of TAG and sharing so generously through social media.
Here are some samples of the creative prompts and ideas shared in the past few months. Click each one to read more about how to implement the activity. Oh, and Amy also sometimes generously shares slides she’s created!
AMY’s JOURNEY
Amy wrote to me, saying, “I believe I have one of the best jobs in the school. I get to work with gifted sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders, and they keep me thinking. Sometimes long after the school day is over!”
Amy’s career path includes working as an office manager at a Montessori school and teaching middle school ELA. She’s taught many gifted and advanced students over the years, and a coworker encouraged her to get her GT endorsement. When a middle school gifted position opened up in her county, she applied. She’s been in that position for four years and loves it.
Amy works with classroom teachers through coaching, curriculum support, and co-teaching with gifted clusters. She also supports students with social-emotional learning and executive functioning skills and leads her Middle School Curriculum Team. Where do you find the time, Amy?
A colleague and friend encouraged Amy to submit her name for Secretary of the Tennessee Association for the Gifted, and she was elected. This led to her involvement in TAG’s social media platforms. When one of the accounts was compromised this year, Amy started new accounts and, as she says, “Here we are!”
“Most of what I share begins with something I’m thinking about or trying with my own students. Last summer, I wrote a collection of 31 ideas that differentiated for gifted and advanced learners. I wanted ideas I could use when I pushed into general education classrooms and that I could share with our team. Those ideas grew into Thinking Through Complexity and Steal It Sunday. Use It Monday.
“I want teachers to look at an idea and think, ‘I could do that.’ Differentiation can feel like one more thing on an already very long list. But sometimes, changing the question, adding a constraint, or asking students to consider another perspective opens up possibilities in a lesson we already teach. Small changes can give students a lot more to think about.
“Then there are Fridays. I love Fun Fridays. Those are the tasks where I ask students to play with an idea, spend a little time in ambiguity, consider something they hadn’t thought about, and keep going when their first idea doesn’t quite work.
“There are those moments when they get so excited about a task that they can’t stop talking. They want to explain what they tried, see what someone else did, or ask for just a few more minutes. That’s what I love.
“I love that social media gives us a place to celebrate other people’s work. We need to lift each other up, support the work, and help good ideas reach teachers and students who can use them.”
If you’ve used any of Amy’s ideas and would like to share, please follow TAG and Big Ideas for Little Scholars and leave your comments and feedback!