Gifted Girls

This booklet discusses and provides suggestions for meeting the educational needs of gifted girls. The first chapter, "The Needs of Gifted Girls," describes the problem of underachievement among gifted girls and strategies that educators can use to support individuality, reduce perfectionism, encourage freedom, recognize socioeconomic and ethnic factors, and foster self-awareness of giftedness. The second chapter, "Identifying Gifted Girls," provides general guidelines for detecting talent in gifted girls, where to look in order to find the behaviors that indicate giftedness, and indicators of talent in culturally different girls. The third chapter, "Rethinking Curriculum and Instruction," addresses how teachers can create a classroom environment to help gifted girls develop their potential, such as making feedback responsive to the needs of gifted girls, minimizing competition, practicing clustering, using compacting or learning contracts, integrating thinking styles, using role-playing, providing leadership opportunities, and integrating women into the curriculum. The final chapter, "Developing Resources and Support," describes how teachers can take advantage of resources already available in their schools to help meet the needs of gifted girls, including creating teacher coalitions, involving parents and students, involving the community, and planning a schoolwide program. A list of resource publications and publishers is included. (CR)