ARBORESCENT WAY OF THINKING
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now you can find us on www.anhugar.com
Anhugar opened a full time school in Switzerland,
designed to help specifically intellectually gifted children.
Retrouvez- nous sur notre nouveau site www.anhugar.com
avec l'ouverture en Suisse d'une Ecole pour enfants à Haut Potentiel Intellectuel
(H.P.I ou enfants précoces ou surdoués)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A difficulty encountered by many gifed children is the fact that they think in an arborescent way instead of a linear one.
The usual teaching methods are linear - when forced to learn in that mode, gifted children need to make a lot of efforts to voluntarily slow-down their "processing" thinking pace.
Arborescent thinking is very adequate for gifted people; it allows them to use all their mental capacities and their knowledge simultaneously. However, it needs to be guided and framed otherwise their thinking takes them far away from the subject of that day.
Here is an example from Jeanne Siaud-Fachin:
The teacher gives a spelling test. He dictates "the boat sails on the sea".
The gifted child will initially visualize an image of a boat on the sea before seeing the sentence made of 6 words.
Following the image, her thoughts will go in all directions:
-
well, it is not a good idea to sail today because there is a lot of wind
-
are there any people on that boat?
-
my friend Frank owns a boat, he's lucky
-
but his parents are divorced, that is not fun
-
I hope my parents will never get divorced
-
yet, Frank has twice as many presents for Christmas now that he has 2 homes
-
which reminds me, I have not yet prepared a wish-list for Christmas
-
etc.
While the other children have finished writing the initial sentance, the gifted child does not remember it at all and if she's pressed, she may write the last sentence that went through her head " I have not yet prepared a wish-list for Christmas ".
This is a frequent problem when the child has to write an essay for instance. Very often, the teacher will comment that it's off-topic.
To illustrate, please see this short example of an essay:
It is therefore important to respect this arborescent way of thinking because it is the way these children work - they do not know of another way to think.
In higher classes, this way of thinking will make it difficult for them to achieve good results. A time will come when explaining how you found the result of a math quizz by saying "I just saw it" will not longer be sufficient.
We train our children to organize their thinking thanks to a specific methodology and frames; these tools help them focus on a specific subject.
We also help the children identify their prefered way of learning and adapt the learning material accordingly.
Contact
