Professor Sandra Kaplan, an expert in gifted education and differentiated curriculum, defines differentiation as "a response to the cognitive, affective, social and physical characteristics that distinguish what and how students learn." In the differentiated classroom, the teacher constantly evaluates student progress on skill achievement and mastery of content and fashions lessons according to individual student mastery. Differentiation requires that the teacher modify the ways in which information acquisition occurs through the use of group activities, peer teaching and other methods. Through allowing students to progress at their own rate, the classroom becomes more student oriented and based less on the curriculum or on test preparation.
For the GATE classroom, centered on developing creative and critical thinking skills, the cognitive domain of Bloom's taxonomy provides an essential roadmap for developing lessons and for guiding students to more complex levels of working with information and materials. By categorizing learning behaviors beginning with knowledge acquisition and continuing through comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and finally to evaluation, the taxonomy provides the teacher with steps for developing lessons that progressively challenge students to reach higher levels of intellectual skill development. An updated version of the taxonomy changes the categories to remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating.
Dr. Joseph Renzulli, the educational psychologist whose three-ring model of giftedness broadened the conception of GATE, provides another effective means of refining the curriculum to match student needs through curriculum compacting. In compacting, the teacher assesses student mastery of material, tailoring lessons and activities accordingly. Once the teacher determines the acceptable level of competence, assessment of students occurs through pretesting, observation, checklists, a discussion session or various other activities. By placing students in groups -- those who know the material, those who have some expertise and those who have little proficiency with it -- the teacher creates activities appropriate for each level.
Other divergent strategies work well with GATE students, including independent projects, interest centers and groups, flexible groupings, independent contracts, advanced questioning techniques, enrichment activities, mentorships and discussion activities. A key factor to remember in determining strategies for working with GATE students revolves around the idea of implementing techniques that connect with the characteristics associated with giftedness. Gifted students need at the least to be challenged, to feel independent, to have a voice in class activities, to have choices and to have variety. By choosing strategies adapted to student learning styles, the teacher can create a successful GATE learning experience for students.