News & Event

The Ministry of Education, represented by the Directorate-General of Special Education “Department of Diagnosis and Care of the Gifted,” implemented yesterday, Tuesday, a virtual awareness evening on (Strategies for Teaching the Gifted in the Classroom) as part of the awareness program series “Evenings in the Sky of Giftedness and Diagnosis.” The virtual evenings come to develop the level of services provided to special education students with disabilities and gifted students, and target workers in the educational field, parents, and members of the local community and its institutions concerned and interested in the field of giftedness and diagnosis. This series of evenings continues until April 2024.

The evening began with a welcome speech delivered by Dr. Tariq Al Kharusi, Director of Diagnosis and Gifted Care Department at the Directorate-General of Special Education, during which he introduced the presenter of the awareness evening, and the importance of teachers and parents benefiting from it in enhancing students’ skills and developing their abilities, especially the gifted ones, whether inside or outside the classroom.

After that, Dr. Adnan Al-Qadi, Advisor for Giftedness and Creativity in the Kingdom of Bahrain, presented a paper on (Strategies for Teaching the Gifted in the Classroom), during which he touched on the topics of this paper, including teaching and pedagogical methods, educational needs, learning patterns and thinking skills. Al-Qadi also explained the concept of giftedness as an innate ability with a tendency toward trends, or an inherited readiness in one or more fields that society values whether in the mental, academic, creative, social, leadership, or artistic field.

Al Qadi also pointed out the pedagogical and teaching needs of the gifted, which the teacher must pay attention to inside the classroom, and the parents outside the classroom, including developing self-learning skills, expanding the acquisition of information, curiosity in discovery, experimentation, ambiguity, the need to learn study skills, and providing challenging and complex educational curricula and activities.

Dr. Adnan talked also about the learning styles of gifted students that the teacher must focus on at the beginning of the school year. Some of them learn in groups, some of them like to learn by listening, some of them learn through manual work, and they also have multiple thinking skills that enable them to recall information, analyzing and managing situations, solving problems, and making decisions. He also explained a number of concepts and their importance for gifted students, including the concept of service learning which is the feeling of gifted students within a group of society with no distinction between them, self-concept which has a strong connection to success. He also pointed out to developing citizenship among gifted students through the biographies of many inspiring Omani national figures, to emulate them, and the necessity of social interaction between gifted students and enhancing their values and morals as an educational method.

Dr. Adnan Al-Qadi touched on the most important methods of teaching gifted students, including vocational apprenticeship, encouraging creativity skills, and the teacher’s application of the multiple intelligences of these students at the beginning of the school year, inquiry-based learning, especially with students who tend to explore and analyze, and teach reading and writing to enrich these students and expand their understandings, whether inside or outside the classroom. Forms of this reading include recreational reading, analytical reading, and critical reading, and critical reading. He also pointed out that the more art is introduced into academic subjects as methods and activities, the more understanding is deepened among these gifted students, story and simulation strategies, role-playing, e-learning and scientific research, class debates, scientific research, teams, and clubs.