Giftedness: an unknown and underestimated gift. A case study with the creation of a didactic unit

The subject of the present dissertation is giftedness, a topic that is commonly underestimated and untreated. It also includes a direct experimentatation with Giacomo, a gifted child who attends the second class of a middle school near Pordenone. He was certified as gifted during the last year of the primary school and his intelligence quotient is of 133 on the Wechsler Scale. My dissertation is based on the hypothesis that giftedness brings remarkable advantages in our lives, althought it might be considered a disability due to the social negative aspects that a gifted child and his/her family could live. These students present various and different needs that are not always understood by professors. Moreover, gifted should be constantly stimulated and motivated with a variety of methodologies and activites proposed by educators, otherwise their qualities and performances would not be adequate to their intelligence quotient, which overcomes 130. This dissertation addresses a particular audience who is interested in this matter and it offers a theoretical and practical part on giftedness, trying to emphasise the positive aspects of this rare but unique characteristic. The first two chapters are theoretical and focus on language teaching, especially for children, remote learning due to the pandemic, moreover they describe giftedness and its definition, the features of giftedness and the six profiles of giftedness, the trainings of professors in Italy and some educational proposals for gifted students. The last two chapters are practical and they include a didactic unit carried out by Giacomo and my personal reflections about it.