THINKING CORNER

Our goal of this newsletter is to provide parents with supplemental resources to enrich their students' daily learning. Quality enrichment is often more about diving deeper into content rather than simply adding extra content. Our hope is that these resources can be used to challenge students and add some excitement and interest to their educational journey!

Think Like an Expert

This month, encourage students to move beyond “What is the answer?” and toward “How do experts think about this?”

Use Depth & Complexity prompts such as:

• 🔍 Details: What important information do you notice?
• 🔄 Patterns: What patterns do you see?
• 🌎 Multiple Perspectives: How might someone else see this?
• ❓ Unanswered Questions: What do we still need to know?
• ⚖️ Ethics: What should we do?
• 💡 Big Idea: Why does this matter?

The California-developed Depth & Complexity framework is specifically intended to increase the depth and complexity of learning for advanced and gifted students.

Give students a short story or article and have them investigate the author's choices.

Challenge: What did the author want you to think, feel, or question?

Students identify: Author's choice → Evidence → Inference → Conclusion

Then challenge them to change one element of the story and explain how it changes the meaning.

William & Mary Gifted Language Arts Curriculum Resources

Give students a problem with multiple possible answers.

Challenge: You have 24 square tiles. How many different rectangles can you build?

Then ask:

• Which rectangle has the greatest perimeter?
• Which has the smallest perimeter?
• What patterns do you notice?
• Can you predict the possibilities for 36 tiles?
• How can you prove you found every solution?

NRICH Mathmatics Problems

Instead of giving students a science experiment with a predetermined outcome, give them a problem to solve.

Challenge: Design a boat that can carry the greatest amount of weight without sinking.

Students must:

1. Design
2. Build
3. Test
4. Record results
5. Modify
6. Retest
7. Explain what changed and why

Build a Boat - Print and Digital Resources

Build a Boat STEM Challenge

Choose a historical event and have students investigate it from different viewpoints.

A great California connection is:

The California Gold Rush

Have students investigate the experience of:

• A miner
• A Native Californian
• A merchant
• A family traveling west
• A government official

Then ask: Can one historical event be both positive and negative?

Smithsonian: History Resources

Have students design an imaginary civilization.

They must create:

• 🗺️ Map
• 🏳️ Flag
• 🏛️ Government
• 🌱 Ecosystem
• 🏘️ Community
• ⚖️ Laws
• 🎨 Art/architecture
• 📖 Written history

Then give them a constraint:

Your civilization cannot use electricity. OR: Your civilization exists on another planet.

Students have to combine art + science + geography + writing + problem solving.

Integrating the arts with core academic subjects is particularly appropriate for gifted learners; research-based gifted education resources specifically recommend using art to deepen interpretation in literature, history, mathematics, and science.

ArtForKidsHub

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Their curriculum is built around the Integrated Curriculum Model, which combines:

Advanced Content + Higher-Level Thinking + Interdisciplinary Connections

They offer gifted curriculum in language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies.

William & Mary Center for Gifted Education Curriculum Hub

Thursday, October 1, 2026

5:00–6:00 PM PST
Virtual via Zoom

California Association for the Gifted - Events