Implementing Enrichment Binders for High Achievers and Gifted Students

Teachers are the ultimate multitaskers, especially when it comes to differentiation! You know you need to meet the needs of all students in your classroom, but supplemental materials often focus on students who are below grade level and need extra support. Finding engaging, rigorous activities to meet the needs of students who consistently breeze through assignments can be a challenge. 

The reality? Gifted and high-achieving students don’t need a bigger stack of busy work… they need different, meaningful activities that advance and enrich their learning and thinking.

Enrichment Binders Make Differentiation Easier to Prep

When students have shown mastery of a skill, we don’t need to make them do more of the same. Instead, we need to have something meaningful ready for them that either advances or enriches their learning and thinking! While that is oftentimes a differentiated task related to the topic at hand, if we’re being realistic, that can be a TON of extra work for teachers to manage all day, every day.

That’s where enrichment binders come in! In combination with differentiated class work and appropriate enrichment programs, the content inside is rigorous and meaningful to challenge and advance gifted learners while still remaining super engaging.

As a gifted facilitator, I provide each of my pullout students with an enrichment binder that they use in their general education classroom. This is a perfect resource for gifted students to use as an early finisher task or anytime their general education teacher needs ideas for help meeting their unique needs. Their classroom teacher can also use some of these tasks in small groups for ready-to-use differentiated activities. Remember, this isn’t just extra work; this is different work and can be tailored to their needs based on preassessment scores, goals, and specific needs.

Enrichment binders are designed to provide the perfect amount and type of practice that gifted students can keep with them to use in the general education classroom. The binders should be updated as needed, based on current skills, goals, and needs.

If you don’t have a gifted facilitator in your school to help, here’s a list of resources I include in our binders. This is a great place to start as you prepare your binders, but keep in mind the importance of authentic texts, magazines, etc.

Enrichment Binder Resources

When it comes to literacy, gifted students often need activities that push them beyond simple comprehension and into deeper analysis, critical evaluation, and advanced language skills. This ELA resource list is packed with resources that challenge students to dig deeper into poetry, language, verbal reasoning, and comprehension.

Gifted ELA Resources

Daily Writing Journal

This daily writing journal is the ultimate way to incorporate SEL with writing standards, helping your gifted learners build essential writing skills while incorporating a growth mindset, self-reflection, and character development. This focus on SEL is especially crucial for our gifted students, who often struggle with perfectionism and the pressure of high expectations.

Verbal Reasoning Activities

Enrichment binders are the perfect place to foster high-level verbal and critical thinking skills that are often a strength for gifted learners. These Verbal Reasoning Activities challenge students to dive into logic and problem-solving.

They are an engaging way to build essential critical thinking and problem-solving skills, pushing students past standard curriculum content. An added benefit is that using these tasks helps students become familiar with the types of questions found on ability tests like the CogAT, making them both meaningful and practical for advanced learning.

Poem of the Week

Including the Poem of the Week activities ensures your gifted students consistently build strong reading skills.

This resource features 40 original poems designed to help students read and comprehend poetry while also practicing fluency. Each poem is paired with thoughtful tasks that push students to focus on oral reading and deeper reading comprehension. Since the poems and questions range in complexity, you can easily select and include the exact pages needed for each student’s binder, ensuring their independent work is perfectly matched to advance their current reading level.

Read and Respond Choice Boards

One of the best ways to provide different and engaging work for your advanced readers is to incorporate student agency into their tasks. These Reading Skills Read and Respond Choice Boards are the perfect addition to the enrichment binder because they put the student in control of their own deep-level practice.

With 33 different choice boards covering a wide range of skills, from central idea and theme to text structure and point of view, these boards allow students to apply advanced comprehension strategies to any book or passage they are reading. The option to choose their task, combined with an “Extend It” question for further rigor, ensures the work is highly meaningful, constantly engaging, and perfectly tailored to advance their literacy skills independently.

Reading Projects

To take reading comprehension to the next level, you need to include this Reading Projects Bundle. Instead of simple worksheets, these projects allow students to demonstrate and extend their mastery of core reading skills, like inference, text structures, and point of view, in a rigorous, engaging, project-based format. 

This ultimate bundle features seven skill-based projects that are perfect for enrichment and extending learning once mastery is demonstrated. By allowing students to apply their knowledge through these creative, deep-dive activities, you ensure their independent work is always challenging, meaningful, and directly focused on advancing their comprehension skills.

Morphology

For advanced readers, one of the most powerful tools for building vocabulary and comprehension is the study of word parts. This Morphology Resource Bundle is perfect for the enrichment binder because it provides a rigorous and systemic way for high-achieving students to deepen their understanding of language.

This bundle is packed with activities like Task Cards and “Morphology in a Minute” exercises focused on Prefixes, Suffixes, and Roots. By mastering these word parts, gifted students gain an advanced skill set that allows them to unlock the meaning of complex, unfamiliar words across all subjects, making it meaningful work that expands their intellectual capacity.

Gifted Math Resources

The math resources in this section will help students move beyond computation and challenge their conceptual understanding of logical reasoning. Our gifted learners need work that helps them analyze more complex problems, articulate their reasoning, and apply their knowledge in real-world situations. Each of the resources below provides both rigor and engagement for new understanding, not just repetitive practice.

Math Project of the Month

To ensure their binder provides rigorous and engaging work, I always include a Math Project of the Month. These projects are my favorite way to boost a student’s learning power with their strong real-world connections and opportunities for cross-curricular learning. 

The true power of including these in the enrichment binder is the ease of customization. You can pull out and assign specific pages from the project to truly hone in on each student’s specific goals and needs. This ensures the student is receiving the different work they require, pushing their understanding in a meaningful way while keeping them completely engaged. I recommend updating the binder with a variety of both skill-based and seasonal options to rotate throughout the year.

Error Analysis Tasks

So often, math work focuses only on solving problems, which leads to a surface-level understanding. To give your high-achieving students the different work they need, their enrichment binder must include Error Analysis Tasks.

These tasks challenge students to look at math in a completely different way. Instead of just solving, they are tasked with four critical steps: figuring out the error, explaining the error in their own words, reworking the problem correctly, and attempting to give advice to the student who made the mistake. That process involves a significant amount of critical thinking and truly increases their depth of understanding of complex concepts, making it a perfect rigorous activity for the binder.

Seasonal Enrichment Binder Resources

While the resources above stay in their binders all throughout the year and rotate as needed, I always add a few seasonal enrichment resources to appeal to students and keep engagement extra high. Here is your guide to seasonally based resources that I incorporate!

Back to School

During the Back to School season, I include:

• Back to School Logic Puzzles
• In Your Teacher’s Shoes Enrichment Project
• Back to School Math by the Numbers

Fall

• Literacy Skill of the Week
• Multiplication and Division Math Mysteries
• Thanksgiving Literacy Project
• Presidential Election Bundle

Winter

• Holidays Around the World Podcasts
• Winter Games Reading Project
• Winter Games Math by the Numbers
• Winter Travel Math Project

Spring

• Football or Titanic Math by the Numbers
• Summer Games Reading or Math Project
• Earth Day Projects

Integrated ELA and Math Resources for Gifted Students

These integrated ELA and math resources require students to apply critical thinking and problem-solving skills across subjects. 

Critical Thinking Daily Brain Busters

To ensure your gifted students always have a challenging and engaging task on hand, include these Critical Thinking Daily Brain Busters. This resource is the ultimate no-prep solution for providing rigorous, daily enrichment as it includes 180 days’ worth of activities, covering the entire school year!

The tasks are designed to be open-ended, pushing students to increase their logical reasoning and engaging them in deep thinking and discussion. With a wide variety of puzzles, creative writing prompts, and problem-solving scenarios, these “Brain Busters” guarantee that the work they are doing keeps their sharp minds active and challenged.

Logic Puzzles

Nothing challenges a gifted mind quite like a good logic puzzle! To round out your enrichment binder, this Logic Puzzles Bundle is a must-have, providing the perfect blend of math and reading logic puzzles for advanced thinkers.

This comprehensive bundle includes dozens of puzzles across 16 different sets, guaranteeing that your high-achievers are always engaged in meaningful, challenging, and different work. These are fantastic for boosting creative thinking, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills, as well as serving as a rewarding challenge for early finishers.

More Gifted Education and Enrichment Resources

If you’re looking for even more ways to challenge and differentiate for your high-achievers, visit these posts next:

• Gifted Enrichment Tips for the General Education Classroom
• How to Identify and Support Gifted and High-Achieving Students
• 15 Unexpected Traits of Gifted Students
• Differentiating and Meeting the Needs of Gifted Students
• The Best Strategies for Differentiating without Burning Out