No, not students who are challenging, but students who need to be challenge. What do you do with that one student who is so far ahead of the others? And, how do you assess? If he or she is so far ahead of the others that he exceeds expectations for the grade level – what then? We have no gifted class or program.
What makes it so challenging is many of the other students require a lot of teacher assistance and guidance – where/how does one find the time to present students like this with challenges that aren’t busy work? Just a thought – his teacher for next year would also like to know.
So, this same student, yesterday said to me “Can you find me some play money and pretend to buy stuff from me? I want to calculate the tax and make change. I’ll need to do that when I’m 15.” No idea why the age of 15 is important but, I found him a set of math money, and a fast food menu and in no time at all, he had a burger stand going in the classroom with kids clamoring to buy imaginary burgers. (and he was claculating tax (which we haven’t done) and making change).
We were having a game day with our multiplication tables and since he has up to the 12s nailed again he was bored. Good solution for him though. Another colleague suggested gving him a set of school supply catalogues and a budget and having him “buy” stuff for the classroom. Hmmmm.