Recognizing Gifted Potential, 2nd Ed

Planned experiences are sets of high-level, open-ended, whole-class activities designed specifically to elicit and diagnose gifted behaviors. Since teachers can vary in the degree of day-to-day stimulation and challenge they provide for students, districts across the country request a set of activities that all grade-level teachers complete with every student to provide equitable opportunities for advanced behaviors to emerge. Each planned experience incorporates several gifted characteristics to ensure multiple opportunities for gifted behaviors to emerge. The characteristics are organized into seven categories in the Kingore Observation Inventory (KOI). Each planned experience provides opportunities for students to exhibit behaviors from multiple KOI categories simultaneously as the KOI categories are interdependent and may not occur independently in all learning situations. Specific directions and procedures are written for the administration and interpretation of each planned experience so the activity and its scoring has standards that are consistently applied every time it is used. Thus, planned experiences are intended as a common denominator that guarantees that every student in each grade level of a district experiences several equitable opportunities to demonstrate gifted potential.