*Student reaction; *Teaching Methods IDENTIFIERS *Differentiation; *Open Ended Questions

Open-ended activities have been advocated in the literature of gifted education as a way to allow students who are identified as gifted to work in their own interest areas, in their own learning styles, and at their own ability levels. They are recommended as a means to differentiate instruction, but little research documents this recommended strategy. In this qualitative study, the nature of open-ended activities was explored in one third-and one fourth-grade heterogeneously grouped classroom. Data sources included observations, interviews with teachers and students, learning style and interest assessment instruments, and documents related to the open-ended activities. The relationship between the open-ended activities and responses of 11 students identified as gifted is the focus of the study. Findings demonstrated that targeted students ' responses were qualitatively different from those of nontarget students, but that assessing the quality of the response was often not within the teacher's design or the goal of the activity. Children's responses demonstrated differences in ability levels, but it was not necessarily the case that targeted students' response matched their ability levels. Appendix A presents a list of observation times, and Appendix B describes the open-ended activities. (Contains 14 references.) (Author/SLD) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document