In Peques and More We present an interview with Encarnación Ricote Belinchón Coordinator of the Integral Enrichment Program for High Capacity Students (SEK Star Program). These are programs intended to anticipate questions and problems to those gifted students and / or with specific talents that in the context of the ordinary classroom exceed the rhythm and contents of the curriculum for the group. And it is necessary to provide children with extra activities and occupations that respond to the characteristics of gifted students and that encourages them to practice productive thinking versus reproductive thinking while developing innovation and creativity. It is a program that takes place in Collaboration with the Department of Evolutionary and Educational Psychology of the Complutense University and it takes place outside of school hours, on Saturday mornings, since 1990. It is taught by a team of experts and specialists in Evolutionary and Educational Psychology and in the different areas included in the program. A lot of information about the program is included later, for now we will know more about the high capacities of children:
What is high capacity and how is it detected in children?
High capacities assume a higher level of intelligence. In this group we could include children with an IQ around 130. They are children who obtain significantly higher than average scores, at least two typical deviations, in the individual intelligence tests.
How many children have these capabilities detected in Spain?
The MEC (Ministry of Education and Science) shows us that 99.4% of children with high capacities have not been diagnosed in school. And when the detection has been done, they have not received the expected response from their educational center.
Most of the social and educational structures are organized for the majority group of the population. However, there are groups of people who, due to their exceptional characteristics, around 3%, need special support for their educational and personal integration, especially in the childhood and youth stages.
The SEK Educational Institution Within its avant-garde pedagogical initiatives and attention to diversity, in the same way that it carries out cognitive training and intelligence development programs, it has been promoting since 1990 a comprehensive program of educational and psychological care for children and young people with high capacities and family training
What kind of help do parents have to know what to do with a high capacity child?
We from the Estrella-SEK Program We offer comprehensive attention to students with High Capacities and their families, we also carry out guidance-guidance activities and follow-up of children with high capacity, in addition to personalized tutorials. This program is complemented by Parent Classroom online, a place for debate, training and guidance on the characteristics, problems and difficulties presented by this student body, both at home and in schools, and with a family perspective.
The main objective is to train and guide the families of students who have high capacities
Therefore, the main objective is to train and guide the families of students who have high capacities. The teaching staff is an expert in their areas, and in staff we count for the advice of specialist psychologists in the treatment of students with high capacity. They are not alone.
What is the comprehensive care program that drives SEES?
He Estrella-SEK Program It is a comprehensive care program for students with high capacities. Our activities are designed based on the age and evolutionary development of our students, as well as their educational needs. The specific educational proposals focus on the enrichment of curricular contents (curricular extensions and adaptations), acceleration and flexibility although always with prior authorization from the MEC and enrichment of the context.
At Estrella-SEK Program It is intended that students with high capacity develop their potential in the company of other children of the same level, without losing the reference of their peers in their usual environment. The objectives are:
- Achieve personal development and prevent school disintegration and personal dyssynchrony
- Prevent behavioral dysfunctions and motivational problems caused by mastery of curricular subjects
- Promote cognitive development
- Strengthen the use of learning strategies
- Develop peer relationship skills
What skills do children who have high capacity have? Can high capacity be confused with precocity or talent?
The intellectual characteristics and educational needs of talented people are:
- Early language development
- Early ability to understand and use abstract systems or symbols
- Organization and management of different data
- Great power of concentration and low intellectual fatigue
- Special control of attention and memory processes
- Curiosity and multiple interests
- Ability to generate original ideas and make connections between different learning areas
- Preference for independent work
The most gifted students require different opportunities to solve their cognitive and socio-emotional needs. These include:
- Maximum performance of skills and basics
- Learning activities at appropriate level and pace
- Experience in creative thinking and problem solving
- Development of self-awareness and acceptance of one's own abilities, interests and needs.
- Development of independence, self-direction and discipline in learning
- Experience in interacting intellectually, artistically and emotionally with other gifted and talented students
- A lot of information on various topics
- Exposure to a series of fields of study, art, professions occupations or access and stimulation of reading
We must distinguish and differentiate between talent and precocity
We must distinguish and differentiate between Talent which refers to a capacity in a specific field, artistic, academic, mathematical, verbal, musical, motor and creative talent. Some authors consider that giftedness crystallizes in one or more talents, but later studies confirm that the presence of any of them is not synonymous with high intellectual capacity. Y Precocity which refers to the evolutionary phenomenon that implies a faster than usual pace of development although it does not reach much higher levels of development. Gifted children will usually be precocious, however, not all precocious children will be gifted.
What do schools have to do with children who have high capacity? Should we give them specific attention?
Our education system and its educators need training and acquire sensitivity towards this population. We offer a course of University expert at UCJC in which we train and give them the necessary skills to confront these students with high capacities.
The two most important educational challenges that characterize the education of our century are intended to be a system adapted to the characteristics of the students that respond to their evolutionary, personal needs and pay attention to diversity, in which school success and learning are maximize
The pedagogical model in which the degree is inspired assumes the double challenge of 21st century education: instruction focused on learning and a system of attention to diversity that responds to the personal and evolutionary needs of students. Starting from these premises our students will reach:
- Know the characteristics of intelligence development and how to enhance it in different educational contexts
- Acquire basic knowledge about students with special educational needs associated with personal conditions of intellectual giftedness, their identification in school contexts and the most appropriate educational responses to their needs
- Develop basic skills and abilities for the educational treatment of people with giftedness
- Discover the neuropsychological bases that govern superior capacity
What can happen to a child with high abilities who has not been correctly identified?
Frequently, cases of giftedness are only detected when the child with these characteristics is conflicting in the classroom, generating the bad impression that giftedness is a problem and not an advantage or potential to be developed.
Over-gifting is not a problem but an advantage or potential to develop
Some cases of children with high intellectual abilities that are not detected end up being cases of children with school failure and poor social adaptation because it has not been known to respond to the needs that the child posed. The child with high intellectual capacity can get bored at school, isolate themselves from their peers for not sharing the same interests and become disoriented due to the loss of interest and curiosity about the things around them.
For all these reasons, it is essential that both the family and the Educational Institutions are alert to the indicators that may appear in children with high capacities to address it early and provide an adequate response that fosters an adequate development of the child.
Is high capacity sufficient to achieve success or do we have to work hard and work hard all my life?
Probably high capacities require a more rigorous discipline to avoid disasters that are seen daily, from the moment when just listening to a teacher for a while stops serving, since they have to do what they have not needed to do previously: strive.
Bright students in Primary can fail in Secondary for not having practiced and acquired study habits
We are meeting in the classrooms, bright students throughout Primary Education who, when they go to ESO, fail academically, for not having practiced and acquired study habits. They live from what they have heard and acquired in class on a day-to-day basis without recovering the activity at any other time of the day, so that in ESO it is not having these habits it costs them a lot and they can fail.
And finally and seeing that high capacity is detected early, between 3 and 5 years, what can be observed in these ages?
All children are special, and have strengths or virtues in certain areas. However, some children have more advanced skills that require adjustments at home and at school to help them grow and learn. While watching your child grow and develop, they may have noticed certain skills or characteristics different from children of the same age.
For example, children can:
- Be very curious and observant
- Use more adult words and reasoning
- Have different unusual ideas
- Recognize complex sequences and relationships
- Find solutions to problems unexpectedly
- Show a great memory
- Ask unusual questions
- Demonstrate advanced talent in certain areas (such as math, science, writing, art, music or interpretation)
- Learn letters or numbers early and read before a formal teaching
Children can show high capacities in different ways, and parents are usually the first to realize their special abilities. If parents observe a large number of these behaviors in their child at an early age, it may be a sign that their development is somewhat advanced.
And here the interview with Encarnación Ricote, which can be found on his Twitter account: @ericotesek. We thank you for the clarifications and explanations you have offered us about the high capacities in the kids. We encourage teachers and parents who want to get more information to contact her. Encarnación has left us a lot of information about Estrella-SEK Program That launched in 1990 to improve the enrichment and personal development of children and young people with high capacities. It is a program through which more than a thousand students have passed, aged between four and sixteen. Then I leave the links to expand the information and training programs such as the course of University Expert at UCJC in the development of intelligence, superior capacity and neuropsychology for teachers
