2024 IAGC Conference

Join us for a fun, interactive session jam-packed with engaging, challenging puzzles you can take home and use right away with your gifted students of almost any age. These complex puzzles, combined with proven strategies for developing students’ metacognitive skills, will fully engage your students, getting them to think in new ways. Plus, you'll learn why puzzles are so unique and effective at building both academic and social/emotional skills in gifted students. 

Participants will learn how implementing the Building Thinking Classrooms teaching approach has transformed learning for all students in a sixth grade gifted math classroom.  Through a culture of collaboration and inquiry, students learn to be resilient and adaptable learners.  Come hear what students say about how their learning and understanding of math changed by collaborating and communicating with others in their classroom.BTC:  Changing mathematical mindsets two feet at a time.

Discover the Gifted Framework Continuum, a tool designed by Chicago Public Schools in collaboration with the National Association for Gifted Children Standards to organize best practices in gifted education. Learn how it empowers educators with indicators for success, ensuring equitable implementation across a school or district. Explore its applications, from guiding goal-setting to informing professional development priorities. Gain insights into its creation process, impact, and utilization, and use time to consider its application to your role. 

Many schools say they cluster group for gifted services, but few say they do it successfully. Dr. Brulles will address the inherent challenges and suggest ways schools can overcome common obstacles when cluster grouping.  Participants will learn how to create a fair and equitable system for serving gifted students by incorporating cluster grouping into school and district initiatives.  She will discuss methods for making student placements, supporting cluster teachers, monitoring success, and building community support.

Increasing diversity and equity is a longstanding goal of gifted education. The fact remains that Brown and Black students and those living in poverty are glaringly missing, partly because most ability tests demand fluency in English and advanced academic knowledge.  Learn an innovative method for identifying gifted students more equitably using tests that include verbal, quantitative and nonverbal measures with test items that can be solved in any language and require minimal academic knowledge.