Kenneth J. Smith 
Challenging Units for Gifted Learners [PDF ebook] 
Teaching the Way Gifted Students Think (Social Studies, Grades 6-8)

Gifted students have the potential to learn material earlier and faster, to handle more complexity and abstraction, and to solve complex problems better. This potential, however, needs stimulating experiences from home and school or it will not unfold. The books in the Challenging Units for Gifted Learners series are designed to help teachers provide the stimulating curricula that will nurture this potential in school. The units presented in this series are based on research into how these students actually think differently from their peers and how they use their learning styles and potential not merely to develop intellectual expertise, but to move beyond expertise to the production of new ideas.The Social Studies book includes units that ask students to explore the struggles of America’s first permanent English settlement in Jamestown, to hold an African economic summit, to study various Supreme Court cases and primary source documents, and to create a Civil War documentary that views the war from the perspective of a person living in a particular state. Grades 6-8