Teachers of highly capable students often struggle to meet the needs of their students, and budgetary constraints frequently limit options. The Mensa Education & Research Foundation supports teachers (and parents) of gifted youth by providing high-quality resources at no cost through its Mensa for Kids website.
One of the most popular resources on the site is our award-winning lesson plans.
The plans “have been a gift to me,” says Denise Lasher, the gifted facilitator for the Rose Hill School District in Kansas. “To have lessons already created is a great time saver and help.” The most common word appearing in feedback about the plans is “love.” They love the variety, complexity, and completeness of the downloadable plans.
Susan Meaney, a gifted and talented support resource teacher in Green Bay, Wis., agrees. “My favorite section of the site is the lesson plan area,” she says. “Each lesson is carefully crafted, putting into account the needs of a gifted learner, involving all of the senses. Every part of a lesson you would want is included.”
The site, which won an APEX Grand Award in 2011, impressed the judges with its “brilliant lesson plans—wonderfully written and illustrated, and crafted to get students involved.”
But teachers shouldn’t stop there because more treasures are being added to the site all the time. Finding resources that appeal to gifted youth is always a challenge, so we have developed two particular assets on the site to address just that.”
One of these is a popular new addition called TED Connections that offers higher-level thinking questions to accompany youth-appropriate TED talks. Teachers can safely send students to the site to explore There are no advertisements, no registration is required, and there is no inappropriate content.
Helping teachers differentiate instruction is another goal of the site’s teacher tools. In addition to the lesson plans, which are specifically designed to be able to be completed by a student without a teacher, the Excellence in Reading program serves as a way for teachers to challenge readers at their reading level without being confined to a particular grade. The program recognizes readers who complete an entire level of selected books with a certificate and a t-shirt. The popular program, open to any child regardless of Mensa affiliation, has had participants from as far away as Australia and Ireland.
Cherie Ingram, a Kindergarten teacher at Lomega Elementary in Oklahoma, had her entire class participate in the program. “My students’ listening levels and vocabularies have increased dramatically as we worked through the list of books,” she says. “It was indeed a challenge, but one we thoroughly enjoyed.”
In addition to the Excellence in Reading program, several schools, including elementary schools in Arlington, Texas, where Mensa is headquartered, are using the Year of Living Poetically program to help children memorize poetry, increasing their vocabularies and their understanding of complex syntax. Also popular are the educational activity plans, ready-made activities to do with bright kids in classrooms or at home. From science to art, the activity plans cover broad areas of interest to kids (and adults).
In addition to the Mensa for Kids Web site, many teachers find the Foundation’s Pinterest boards extremely helpful in quickly finding classroom ideas across a wide range of subjects.