Not Just About IQ Scores, But Characteristics, Too

An Introduction to the Concept of Levels of Giftedness

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I originally published a version of this series, these concepts, in 2004 before my first book was released in 2005. That book was called 5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options. The book was formerly titled Losing Our Minds: Gifted Children Left Behind. At the end of each of these posts about the Levels of Giftedness, I list — with explanations — what each of my books is about.

Through my own experiences reading Substack and Medium posts, and whatever I read before that, I’ve learned I don’t really want to read each one every day and I really don’t want it to be too long. So, I’ve divided this piece into 6 posts.

This Introduction pertains to the whole series. I will focus on the actual milestones and early behaviors and interests of the gifted children at each level. Keep in mind, just like standardized testing, there are no real cut-off scores or absolutes. Also, schools and their approaches to meeting the needs of their students have not appreciatively changed since I wrote my first book. In fact, it’s tougher now for meeting the needs of gifted children, families, and adults than it’s been for decades.

Introduction

Any parent who has more than one child knows that regardless of the way they parent or what they provide for their children, the children are different from one another in many, many ways. Although certain characteristics certainly run in families, the looks, temperaments, abilities, talents, and interests of each child are usually at least somewhat dissimilar between them. Even our school systems acknowledge that children vary in their learning abilities; but at the same time that we recognize that children are different from one another, we set up school instructional and social situations that treat them as though any differences are either small or nonexistent. The problem may be that there is little or no understanding in schools of how vast the learning differences are.

The customary method of grouping children for instruction in schools is heterogeneous (mixed ability) grouping and “whole class” instruction. Despite considerable evidence that the achievement span among children of the same age can be — and usually is — quite significant [1], children are almost always strictly grouped with others who are the same age as they are. The intellectual differences between children of the same age become socially and academically problematic when the children are continually grouped together in schools all day for all their instruction and activities.

For example, when a little girl routinely uses advanced vocabulary and wants to guide the play of her more typical classmates, they may resent her and see her as “bossy” or strange because of the words she uses. If a boy who enjoys reading books on history and wants someone to discuss his passionate interest with, he may be viewed as socially immature if he keeps turning to his teacher for attention instead of playing with the boys his age.

Author Note: I believe that unless we know and understand how different children can be from one another, we cannot effectively address the best methods for meeting the needs of any of them. Some years ago I set out to study learning differences — particularly those of highly intelligent children.

There is a mountain of research on individual learning differences that is available, and has been available, for many years. Although my Ruf Estimates of Levels of Giftedness are relevant to children in the upper one-third or so of a typical classroom, differences of a similar magnitude occur throughout the range of learners who are generally in the lowest third of many classrooms, as well.