talented

TalentEd is a fantastic resource of classroom activities designed to bring out the higher thinking skills of every learner. The book is divided into 26 sections, each devoted to a letter of the English alphabet, a topic on that letter, and activities associated therein. The brilliance is in the organization of these activities and the depth of each.

Each activity is not age or grade designated. This is for good reason. Any skilled educator can take any activity in the entire book and extrapolate it to apply to the grade level they teach. Activities are carefully structured around many different modes of thinking and expressing while coupling critical thinking skills and scholastic quality. These include history, hands-on, writing, creative design, multi-product, and artistic activities.

Overall as a fifth grade teacher I find this to be an indispensable resource. If given the time, and I may create the time, I would love to have a long-term letter-based unit using these ideas.

• A is for ABC books
  Activities include: Alphabet grids (a la Scattergories), proverbs, and ABC books
• B is for Biography
  Activities include: Research of your birthday, reading biographies, and scrap booking
• C is for Creativity Catalogues
  Activities include: catalogues created by students of anything
• D is for Daydreams
  Activities include: life goals and reading famous goals and success stories
• E is for Entrepreneurship
  Activities include: study and research of entrepreneurs, student created businesses, self-evaluation, negotiating, advertising, and student created business magazines
• F is for Fairy Tales
  Activities include: story melding and fluency and flexibility in writing
• G is for Garbage
  Activities include: explore definitions of garbage, multiple talents activity, and decision-making
• H is for Hope
  Activities include: future thinking, predicting, and acting
• I is for Invention
  Activities include: problem solving, exploring innovation, and student inventions
• J is for Journals
  Activities include: how and what to journal
• K is for Kingdoms
  Activities include: creating a personal universe and reading fantasy works
• L is for Literature
  Activities include: Reading top-rated suspense and drama works and book sharing projects
• M is for Mystery
  Activities include: what is sleuthing, how to collect information, writing a mystery, and race mystery activity
• N is for Newspaper
  Activities include: how to write a newspaper
• O is for Olympics
  Activities include: Olympic history and product project
• P is for Pigs, Parody, and Puns
  Activities include: When Pigs Fly problem solving and write parodies and puns
• Q is for Questions
  Activities include: decision making
• R is for Recipe
  Activities include: favorite food recipes and recipes for non-food (i.e. unbeatable football teams, popularity, courage, great coaches, etc)
• S is for Service
  Activities include: brainstorm, create, and enact a stewardship plan
• T is for (No) Television
  Activities include: explore the impact of television both positive and negative, taming the beast, extensive television activities
• U is for Understanding a Word
  Activities include: abstract nouns, extensive word research and usage of one word
• V is for Verse
  Activities include: writing poems in various forms
• W is for Writing
  Activities include: story reactions, dream job, monthly celebration research and creation, autobiography|autobiographies], and many more thoughtful writing activities
• X is for Classroom eXperts
  Activities include: lab experiences, guest speakers, audio-visual material creation, and many more hands-on activities created by the students
• Y is for DictionarY and EncYclopedia
  Activities include: People, Places, and Things that begin with Y and story writing based on the letter Y
• Z is for Zebras and Zoo Stories
  Activities include: collaborative writing

Tal"ent*ed, a.

Furnished with talents; possessing skill or talent; mentally gifted.

Abp. Abbot (1663).

⇒ This word has been strongly objected to by Coleridge and some other critics, but, as it would seem, upon not very good grounds, as the use of talent or talents to signify mental ability, although at first merely metaphorical, is now fully established, and talented, as a formative, is just as analogical and legitimate as gifted, bigoted, moneyed, landed, lilied, honeyed, and numerous other adjectives having a participal form, but derived directly from nouns and not from verbs.

© Webster 1913.