Openended activities: Differentiation through learner response

This article explores the meaning of curricular dif-ferentiation for identified gifted students by exam-ining learner responses to open-ended activities. Very little research supports or describes how open-ended activities—which have been advocated as a strategy to allow students to work in their own interest areas, in their own learning styles, and at their own ability level—serve to differentiate the curriculum. This paper sets curriculum differentia-tion in an historical perspective, reviews a compre-hensive investigation into the nature of open-ended activities, and focuses on how and in what ways the responses to open-ended activities of children identified as gifted differed from responses of children who were not identified as gifted in a third-grade and a fourth-grade heteroge-neously grouped classroom. The study also focuses on teacher perceptions of classroom activities and learner responses. Data sources included observa-tions over the course of one academic year, inter-views with teachers and students, learning style and interest assessment instruments, and docu-ments related to over 33 open-ended activities. Based on the findings reported here, the author proposes a reexamination of the meaning of curric-ular differentiation with a renewed emphasis on determining how an instructional strategy, for example, providing open-ended activities, maxi-mizes student’s capabilities. At 10 a.cn. Monday through Friday, ill 24 students in Keith’s third-grade classroom open their writing note-books and begin tbeir 30 minutes of writing time. Thev may write anything. in whatever genre then choose (fietion, non-notion, poctry), and they may take as long as they’d like to finish a story that they have begun. For some children, one written piece may take weeks. When students finish thcir first drafts, they get help from the teacher to edit their work. Then they copy their story into a final form and bind it to be displayed on a rack of finished stories. Would all children want to be involved in such a learning experience? Could all children participate in such a learning experience? Should all children be expected to succeed in such a learning experience? If the answer is &dquo;yes&dquo; to all of those questions, then thi