When Smart Kids Underachieve in School: Practical Solutions for Teachers

Oftentimes, gifted students and students with disabilities are seen as two opposite ends of a spectrum. There are children who fall into both categories, however. These children are referred to as twice-exceptional.

It is double the challenge to educate twice-exceptional students. They must receive instruction that attends to both their gifts and their disabilities. This is no easy task, because many times it is the learning disability that receives the focus. On top of that, because of their giftedness, these children are prime candidates for underachievement because their learning disabilities make it difficult for them to reach their high potential.

There are typically three categories of twice-exceptional students (Besnoy, 2006):

1. Identified gifted: These are children who have slight learning disabilities, allowing them to be recognized as gifted by educators. This is because they are able to test well on the achievement and cognitive tests. Their giftedness, however, masks their learning disabilities, so they struggle in school. Teachers may encourage them to work harder, but what these students really need are interventions tailored to their learning disability.

2. Identified learning disabled: These children are the opposite; they have a learning disability, and this prevents them from being identified as gifted. The services these children receive are simply for their disability, so their giftedness is never addressed. The focus is on their disabilities and not their giftedness, so these students oftentimes do not receive the challenge their gifted minds require.

3. Unidentified gifted and learning disabled: These are the children whose giftedness and learning disability mask one another. In other words, the learning disability prevents them from being identified as gifted, and being gifted prevents them from being identified as learning disabled. Because of this, they are almost never identified as either. They go through school maintaining good, not great, grades, making recognition of both their giftedness and their disabilities very difficult.

When teachers are writing Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) for a special education student, they usually focus on the student’s weaknesses and what can be provided that will allow him to achieve despite them. With gifted students, teachers and coordinators often identify based on a student’s strengths. He is gifted in math or he is superior cognitive, so he can think at a much higher level and thus should be challenged.

Working with twice-exceptional students, focus on their strengths. Oftentimes their strengths can compensate for their weaknesses. This is a precarious balancing act that, if done properly, can result in the student achieving to his potential. If it is unbalanced or not properly carried out, underachievement can result.

There are several types of learning disabilities that can affect the way a student is able to process material or learn. Some of the more common ones are (Besnoy, 2006):

» Dyslexia: This condition affects a child’s ability to read. It causes students to struggle with memorization of facts, reading comprehension, and organizing language both written and spoken.

» Dyscalculia: This causes students to have difficulty mentally organizing mathematical operational procedures. They might have trouble recognizing mathematical symbols and can reverse numbers. This learning disability causes one to have only modest knowledge of his or her cognitive strategies.

» Dysgraphia: These students have difficulty with word recognition, fine motor skills, and orthographic-motor integration. This seriously hinders a child’s ability to write. They can also find it difficult to process language and spell.

» Speech/language disorders: These can cause students to lack appropriate listening comprehension skills, which basically means they struggle with following verbal directions. This can cause gaps in knowledge and difficulty with social situations.

Although the disability might vary, the characteristics of gifted students with learning disabilities commonly include (Reis, Neu, & McGuire, 1995):

Many of these characteristics mirror what underachievers without a learning disability have, such as perfectionism, lack of organizational skills, and supersensitivity. There are others specific to twice-exceptional students, such as deficiency in tasks emphasizing memory and perceptual abilities, demonstration of poor listening and concentration skills, and frustration with inability to master certain academic skills.

As stated before, it is important not to focus on the disabilities that hamper the learning, but rather the strengths these students bring to the classroom. Some of these strengths include (Reis et al., 1995):

The teacher working with this student should try to identify the student’s strengths. This can be done by simply asking the student himself what he believes are his strengths:

It is important to get a good understanding of the student’s strengths before deciding which strategies to use with him.

When Twice-Exceptional Students Have Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

In addition to a learning disability, a neurologically-based developmental disability can also make a child twice-exceptional. About 3%–5% of children have Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and it causes a child’s attention process to become disrupted and to be easily distractible. This might manifest itself in various ways, through inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity, or a combination (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).

Inattention is when a child has great difficulty concentrating on a task (especially if it is boring or long term). Some students might struggle to figure out just where to start a task. Because they cannot figure it out, they are never able to move forward. Others might be able to start, but once in, they get lost along the way, especially if there are a lot of steps. Some behaviors that might indicate inattention include (American Psychiatric Association, 2013):

» failing to give close attention to details or making careless mistakes in schoolwork, work, or other activities;

» not following through on instructions and failing to finish schoolwork, chores, or duties in the workplace (not due to oppositional behavior or failure to understand instructions);

» avoiding, disliking, or being reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort (such as schoolwork or homework);

» losing things necessary for tasks or activities (e.g., toys, school assignments, pencils, books, or tools);

Hyperactivity is when a student appears to be in constant motion, may be fidgety and restless, or gets easily excited. Because the student does not know how to cope with this hyperactivity, she may have difficulty keeping her focus and getting her schoolwork done. For the teacher, this hyperactivity is a behavior issue, but as with most handicaps, the student is not in total control. This behavior is not a choice; it is a disorder that impedes her learning. Some signs of hyperactivity include (American Psychiatric Association, 2013):

» leaving seat in classroom or in other situations in which remaining seated is expected;

» running about or climbing excessively in situations in which it is inappropriate;

The final symptom of ADHD is impulsivity. As discussed earlier, some gifted children are impulsive. The answer comes so quickly to them in their fast-thinking minds, that it is out of their mouths in seconds. The impulsivity in children with ADHD is different. Impulsive gifted children act without thinking because they struggle to wait or delay gratification. The impulsive behavior of children with ADHD verges on risk-taking, which in certain circumstances can be dangerous. It may cause a child to dive into the deep end of the pool or, when dared by a classmate, jump off the monkey bars. In reality, this child is not a risk-taker, but simply cannot control the impulsivity. This child often may (American Psychiatric Association 2013):

An educator should understand that these behaviors are not a matter of choice. These children have little control over these behaviors, although there are medications that can help students to manage them.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are complex disorders of the brain that vary in severity but are usually characterized by difficulties in social interaction, repetitive behaviors, and trouble with verbal and nonverbal communication. The intensity of ASD can be greater for some kids than others. Children with severe ASD rarely test as gifted because the disorder masks the giftedness. However, many students who have high-functioning autism do qualify as gifted. This is because gifted students and children with high-functioning autism have many of the same behaviors. Some of these include (Neihart, 2000):

Differences that might separate gifted students from twice- exceptional students with ASD include speech patterns, response to routines, humor, and motor clumsiness (Neihart, 2000). It is these differences that the teacher must learn to work with in order to get the most out of the high-functioning autistic child’s gifts.

Gifted children typically are not the most organized. You may ask them to get a homework assignment for you, and they pull out a binder jam-packed with various papers, some of which date back to the Reagan administration. Their desks are always cluttered, lockers have items just shoved into them, and even their appearances can look disorganized. Children who are twice-exceptional have twice the reason to be unorganized—their giftedness and their disabilities. Getting twice-exceptional students organized can go a long way in making it easier for them to be able to use their gifts.

» Set a weekly backpack-cleaning day: Some students tend to use their backpacks like dumpsters. They put in every piece of paper they receive, carry every book even though it might not be used all week, and have toys and other nonschool necessities. This makes for a very heavy backpack that could end up causing back strain. At least once a week, have students go through and get rid of any material no longer needed. Have conversations about what books are absolutely needed and which ones can go in a locker or be left at home.

» Make lists of tasks that need to be done: Lists are just another way to break big jobs into smaller parts. If you give students a multistep assignment, make it manageable by listing steps for students to check off. If a math teacher asks students to work on a set of problems, trade with a partner and grade, and then correct the mistakes, the list might look like this:

» Make desk cleaning/organizing a daily routine: Having a nonfunctional workspace is going to result in work not getting done. The same goes for a student desk. Can he find a pencil when he needs it? Does he have the materials he needs to finish a task? Helping a student clean/organize his desk can be as simple as bringing to his attention that his desk needs some attention. Also important is giving him the time and space to do this.

» Use graphic organizers: This is a strategy that teaches twice-exceptional students how to organize their ideas, something they might struggle with using traditional teaching methods. It also serves as a visual reference that allows students to see their thoughts. These students often have difficulty getting ideas from their exceptional brains to the paper. Many graphic organizers can help this process.

» Show them how to organize a notebook: As students get older, the need for taking notes will become more prevalent. There are effective ways to organize notes, and there are some that cause confusion. Showing students how to organize their notes can help them review material, study for a test, or write a research paper. How to organize and take notes is addressed in more detail in Cause 7: Lack of Skills.

» Use a planner: Human beings forget 90% of what they hear even when they are trying to remember. To help students organize their work and deadlines, a planner is an excellent resource. It can be broken down by subject area, or prioritized by most important to least or by due dates. Learning the value of being organized in their younger years will only translate to good things when students are adults.

» Color-code entries on calendars: Some students struggle to write down assignments and thus might not have completed homework that was assigned. When writing assignments on the board, use different colors for different subjects or grades. If you are a teacher who teaches multiple subjects, red might represent language arts while green is social studies. This color-coding is just one more way for you to clearly communicate to students what they are supposed to do.

Teaching students to be organized allows them to learn better, a valuable 21st-century skill.

Some students are very good at seeing the big picture of a long-term assignment. Others, however, especially students with learning disabilities, have difficulty seeing past a day, much less multiple weeks of work. A long-term assignment can be too big a pill to swallow. It needs to be broken into much smaller parts so it can be easily digested.

For instance, if a student is assigned to write a research paper on the effects of gravity, the tasks can be broken down into steps:

3. Go back and indicate where each set of notes fits into the overall outline of the paper.

By breaking the assignment into smaller tasks, or chunking, students find it more palatable and can better see how to complete each smaller task. It helps students to see that the project has a beginning, middle, and end. You can also assign deadlines to these tasks so that a student realizes when she is falling behind and needs to increase her efforts to catch up.

One way to help students see this a little better is with a graphic organizer. In this case, an effective graphic organizer might be a calendar (see Table 8). This allows students to visualize how the project is broken up, making it appear more manageable.

TABLE 8
Sample Research Project Calendar

Images

Using two or more senses can increase the amount of learning retention a student has. This would involve incorporating a combination of visuals, sounds, textures, tastes, and smells into the lesson. Using this multisensory approach can help a twice-exceptional student tap into her learning strengths in order to make connections and form memories. It also allows her a wider range of ways to show what she has learned. If you are teaching an elementary class about Johnny Appleseed, you could have them watch a video of the Disney song “The Lord is Good to Me,” so they are getting visual and auditory learning. Additionally, you could bring in some apples and allow students to smell and taste them. You could conclude by having students plant an apple seed of their own on the school grounds, bringing in tactile and kinesthetic learning.

Figure 10 is an example of a multisensory lesson to teach students about the Constitution. In order to complete the project, students must use a wide variety of senses from visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile learning styles.

Figure 10. Sample multisensory lesson.

Schoolhouse Rocks

Remembering the three main principles in the Constitution—federalism, separation of power, and checks and balances—you are going to create a song that teaches an article in the Constitution. Your group will need to:

• Read the article(s) you are assigned.

• Figure out what is important about the article.

• Write a song, either of your own original composition or using music from an already existing song.

• Create a five question, multiple-choice quiz that tests your audience over the information in your song.

Your grade will be based on the following:

1. Originality/creativity: How energetic and inventive is your song?

2. Completeness: Does your song cover the important parts of the article?

3. Relevance/quiz: Are the answers for the quiz covered directly in your song?

4. Understandability/song sheet: Can we understand what your group is saying, and is the song sheet legible and correct?

Tips for a better grade:

• You may film your song, but it is not necessary. Video does allow you to do many takes though and use more creative settings.

• Props and costumes always enhance the creativity aspect.

• The chorus should contain the main idea of the article and be repeated at least four times.

• Lyric sheet, quiz, and answer sheet for quiz are due the class before presentation.

• First and foremost, your song must teach!

Using this approach with twice-exceptional students allows the disability to be compensated for, while at the same time allowing the child to use his strengths.

Twice-exceptional students can be twice the challenge because their disabilities mask their giftedness or vice versa. The important thing to remember is that this student has gifts that should be focused on. By focusing on these strengths, students can overcome the disability. Finding the correct strategies to tap into these strengths is the key.

If you would like to read more in-depth about one of these strategies or topics, a good resource is Successful Strategies for Twice-Exceptional Students by Kevin Besnoy.