Spotting a gifted child is not something a teacher does by glancing through her classroom. Although parents might try to point out their gifted child, what a parent thinks isn't necessarily what gifted truly means. It's not as easy as one may think to spot a gifted child for three reasons.
1. It might not be the child who makes good grades.
2. It might be the child who misbehaves.
3. It could even be the child who has a learning disability.
Another problem which blocks us from spotting a gifted child is that society tends to dismiss kids from economically disadvantaged homes where no one sees the gifted ability although it's there. If a child's predominant language is something other than English, his or her gift might be hidden behind a language barrier. Other children have disabilities that hide the gifted ability from our society which doesn't tend to appreciate diversity.
CASE IN POINT:
I once had a student with a gifted ability and he was a gang member. Actually, I had more than a few, but I'll stick with the one that fits the examples above. I taught what gave a student credit for high school English, but the truth was that my class was actually a literacy class for illiterate teens who couldn't read a thing at the age of sixteen.
This young man was Hispanic and had been placed in special education long before he came into my classroom. His family were migrant workers who traveled back and forth from Mexico to the USA every six months or so. The boy was obviously intelligent as far as I was concerned. I personally believed that he had been misplaced long ago and did not qualify as learning disabled, but there he was with an IEP in my special education classroom and according to the law, I was legally bound to uphold the IEP which seemed to me to be far below his capabilities. To get around it, once he mastered each and every goal and I documented the mastery for legal purposes, I allowed him to shine by assigning him what he was gifted in.
The boy was an amazing artist who used his ability to paint graffiti on public property. He'd been, "doodling," in his classrooms since kindergarten, so teachers had complained to the ARD committee that he was, "lazy, a delinquent, didn't care and never tried." All he ever did was to draw on whatever canvas he could find.
To make a long story short, the boy was a gifted artist, but he displayed the signs of this by doodling on his desk. He couldn't read or communicate effectively. He didn't like to write, because wiring involved reading and reading in English, which he didn't speak or comprehend adequately, so he failed miserably for years and years of inadequate education.
HOW TO SPOT A GIFTED STUDENT:
1. Pay attention to doodling.
If you have a child who doodles all the time, take the time to see what he's doodling. Is it actually an amazing sight to see? Move beyond your need to keep the kids from defacing school property just long enough to see the gift.
2. A huge Vocabulary.
Gifted kids tend to talk a lot. He might be the child who is constantly interrupting or disrupting. He or she always has something to say and doesn't seem to be able to wait. The teacher will note this child's vocabulary seems higher than her own. Sometimes she might even look up one of the child's words in the dictionary to make sure the child isn't making them up. He might be obsessed with cross word puzzles or is a whiz at video games and other electronic word games. He or she talks and talks so much that everyone calls he or she a chatter box.
3. Notice creativity.
Most every gifted student is creative and will choose to complete an assigned task only if it challenges his creativity. For the rest, he will simply go to sleep with his head on the desk. At other times he might be the practical joker in the class who puts a spider on the teacher's desk just so he can creatively watch her jump and scream. He or she will argue with you about everything you say and do. If you say, "Looks like rain," he or she will dictate back to you the weather forecast for the day and you'll find that the gifted child is usually right about the weather or whatever the child says is true. He may even make a fool out of you, because you see, he or she will spot your mathematical mistake before you do in front of the entire classroom. Creative kids find all kinds of creative ways to survive the public school system all through their educational lives.
4. Seek out the curious child.
The child who bombards you with questions all the time might be a gifted child. For every fact you state, the gifted child will ask, "Who, what, where or why?" He or she wants to know everything and they will ask you who, where, what, why and how until you want to pull your hair out. The child will be surprised to find that you don't know the answer to the questions he or she asks of you, so it's wise to simply say, "I'll check on that and get back to you."
The curious child has a hard time with text book reading and gets bored easily. You'll need to find activities which peek his curiosity, so if you have a student like this, have him or her referred for an assessment as a potential gifted kid.
5. Observe emotional outburst.
Gifted kids can get easily frustrated with society and you along with your classroom. Frustrated kids tend to lash out and in their frustrated way, cry out, "Give me something interesting to do before I explode all over this room." Kids that seem too frustrated for their own good might need to be challenged more than you have the ability to do.
6. See the quiet and shy child.
Now and then, the gifted child will feel so out of sorts in your classroom, that he or she will shut down completely, so pay attention to the shy child in your room. See what he or she can do and if he or she seems too isolated to you, pay attention even if you can plainly see he or she has no gifted quality. Still, remember that shy kids can and are sometimes gifted.
7. Appreciate diversity.
The learning disabled kid, the bilingual child, the economically disadvantage student might also display a gifted quality, so don't dismiss these. Diversity is the spice of life and classrooms too, so see these kids through an opened minded point of view and you might find a gifted child or two.
To Conclude:
The list of ways to spot a gifted child go on and on, so I'm sure there are many more unexplored. Still, if the teacher only keeps one thing in mind, which is to spot what and who stands out in the crowd of students in your classroom, you might end up spotting a gifted child in the process.