ABSTRACT
Adolescent gifted learners are some of the most complex students a teacher will encounter in his or her career. Not only are they experiencing adolescent development, which has its own issues, but they are gifted on top of it. Trying to keep adolescent gifted learners motivated, engaged, and productive is a never-ending battle. This article shares some of the reasons adolescent gifted learners underachieve, as well as practical ideas teachers can employ to keep their students on track. Successful students have learned to adapt to the educational setting through the many challenges they encounter. Gifted students often don’t encounter sufficient academic challenges for them to build the skills they need to adapt to a rigorous setting. An excellent way for teachers to provide for choices in the classroom is to create choice menus, which are a formatting strategy for differentiating curriculum and instruction.
