Key Features
• General intellectual ability:
o IQ scores = 2 standard deviations above mean individual/group measures
o High vocabulary, memory, abstract word knowledge, abstract reasoning,
hypothesis creation and solution
• Specific academic aptitude:
o Maintaining above average grades/levels of achievement identified through
tests and exams
o Gifted = showing ability in at least two academic subjects; talented =
showing in all non-academic pursuits
• Creative/productive thinking:
o Advanced problem solving ability
o Critical thinking skills: attributing, comparing and contrasting, classifying,
sequencing, prioritising, drawing conclusions, cause and effect, detecting
bias, analysing for assumptions, solving analogies, evaluating, decision
making – analysis, synthesis, evaluation
o Creative thinking skills: brainstorming, visualising, personifying, inventing,
associating relationships, inferring, generalising, predicting, hypothesising,
making analogies, ambiguity, paradox
o Problem solving: define problems independently, discover independent
methods to solve, create solutions
o Willingness to take risks and challenge accepted thinking
• Leadership ability:
o Demonstrate through positions of responsibility: chairman, captain, prefect,
student representative, council
o Demonstrate through classroom-created opportunities: group leader, class
captain, peer-instruction
o Demonstrate organisational skills through extra curricular initiatives
o Demonstrate through sporting opportunities/cultural opportunities
• Visual/performing arts:
o drama, dance, mime, debating, public speaking, music, arts, presentations,
demonstrations
• Psychomotor ability:
o kinaesthetic motor abilities: practical, spatial, mechanical, physical skills,
sporting prowess
Observational checklist to identify talented and gifted pupils:
• Possesses superior powers of reasoning, of dealing with abstractions, of
generalising from specific facts, of understanding meanings and of seeing into
relationships.
• Originality and initiative in intellectual and practical work.
• Information can be absorbed quickly and stored, sifted, analysed and organised
to develop coherent and complex arguments.
• Has a devastating appreciation of the weaknesses of other people including
those in positions of authority.
• Unusually high personal standards; frustration if they cannot achieve the
excellence they demand of themselves; perfectionist approach; not satisfied
with the approval of others.
• When interested, becomes absorbed for long periods; may be impatient with
interference or abrupt change.
• Keen powers of observation, noting mismatches and analogies.
• Adapts articles readily and uses them for purposes other than those for which
they were intended.
• Preference for company of older children and adults; boredom with company
and interests of peers.
• Exhibits exceptional curiosity and constantly wants to know why.
• Shows interest in the existential nature of things.
• Ability to lead and influence others.
• Shows marked prediction skills.
• Pursues subjects or interests in great depth.
• Prefers individual approach to solving problems, learning.

Subject area development plan
• Brainstorm characteristics of exceptional performance in departmental meeting
• Use INSETs to help define what is meant by high ability/aptitude
• Use actual pieces of work from pupils as discussion points
• Draw upon any case studies you may have from own school or elsewhere
• Discuss problems of assessment and explore divergent opportunities
• Agree on implementation procedure for action plan
• Action plan to include review of learning and teaching styles; agreed dates to
discuss and share ideas, problems, solutions
• Action plan to include extension opportunities for gifted and talented
• Action plan to include ways to use willing gifted students as teachers
Barry Teare, Effective Provision for Able and Talented Children,
Network Educational Press Ltd, 2002

 Subject-specific checklists
Able students may demonstrate all or any of the following:
Music:
• Perform exceptionally well on a solo instrument
• Show great sensitivity in group performance
• Sing with unusual quality or style
• Compose original music with flair and invention
• Redraft compositions with uncommon speed and accuracy
• Display excellent oral skills
• Learn and understand technical aspects of music extremely quickly
• Show exceptional understanding of culture and historical styles
History:
• Enjoys accumulating knowledge by reading and research
• Has a healthy scepticism about evidence and sources, and therefore has an
appreciation of the limitations of the conclusions reached
• Is sensitive to the weighting of various pieces of evidence
• Possesses a strong sense of chronology and development
• Has an ability to divorce self from the present with all its assumptions and
contexts
• Has the intellectual capacity to comprehend and understand complex theories
and concepts
• Appreciates the complexity behind human actions and thus taking due
consideration of a variety of causes
• Has the ability to impose a pattern of thought across a wide spectrum of
information and sources
Written work – abilities for examination success...
• Has good reading and study skills which allow the extraction of key ideas
• Possesses advanced language skills which leads to good expression of
thoughts, including appropriate vocabulary choice
• Has the ability to organise thoughts into a logical sequence which enhances
understanding of concepts involved
• Displays subtlety and finesse in the presentation of material including the use of
pertinent questions and the interesting juxtapositioning of ideas