EDUCATION OF GIFTED CHILDREN PROJECT

I Gifted children, my working group, are the most disadvantaged members of society. In our country, they even receive the least share of the budget allocated to education. It is of critical importance that gifted children who outperform their peers in one or more areas are included in appropriate educational programmes. Based on this problem situation, I collaborated with public institutions, universities and non-governmental organisations in my city to sign a protocol and ensure that gifted children are diagnosed and educated. I provide enriched and differentiated education services to gifted children diagnosed with ASİS intelligence test, Turkey's first domestic and national intelligence test, in 1st grade. I have been conducting the project for 10 years and the study is the first and only of its kind in Turkey. In the last 10 years, I have identified 4500 students in central neighbourhoods and rural areas and placed students diagnosed with special talents in appropriate programmes. Considering that intelligence tests are paid in Turkey, thanks to the protocol I made, approximately 4 million 500 thousand Turkish Liras of public savings were achieved with current figures. I worked for 3 years in the field of Mathematics in the preparation of the TUBITAK-supported ‘Teaching Programme for Special Talents’, which was implemented for the first time in Turkey and the world. I took part in the team of this curriculum, which was the first of its kind in the world.

I take my students to Forest School every month (lessons on survival in nature, life skills, science and ecology etc.). We frequently visit science centres, space camps, observatories, astronomy societies, ecology schools, model aircraft workshops, etc. With these collaborations, I ensured that 1400 students benefited from 196 different workshops for the application of the theoretical education that the children received from me. In total I have reached close to 20000 people and this effort and appreciation has earned me numerous national and international teacher awards.