Independent study, IS for short, instruction has been an important learning activity ushering gifted students gradually into becoming knowledge producers. Twelve high-performance IS instructors from across this country were interviewed in this qualitative study, which investigates why IS has interested these teachers, and what has been involved and included in instructing process. After the author has generalized her ideas from these instructors' suggestions on the IS teaching in the elementary school gifted classes, she offers her own findings as follows: A. It is their willingness and interest, internally speaking, that have motivated these high-performance teachers to be IS instructors; another motivation, externally speaking, came from that they had experienced the success joy of having received rewards as excellent IS teachers. Additionally, they all shared the common characteristics of liking innovative teaching and having the get-to-the-bottom research spirit. B. Having a well-thought-out plan in mind and preparing in advance have been two of these excellent teachers' routine tasks before each teaching. During the whole teaching process, they would guide their gifted students to look for proper research topics, systematically arrange each teaching process and situation, make good use of teaching strategies and methods, give suggestions and directions on students' research paper writings, and evaluate their papers. And after each teaching process is done, they would have the students emphasize on the application of learned learning strategies and be focused on the learning of metacognition. The teachers would also engage on post-teaching reflections with the vision of striving for perfection in teaching strategies and methods. C. These high-performance IS instructors were convinced that an IS program should at least have the following functions: 1. It should be focused on creating a breeding and nurturing ground for the students' scientific approaches and attitudes. 2. It is able to create a practical hands-on experience in that the students could think, do, and learn from this experience. 3. It is a long-term program that could train and bring up the abilities they need and will need in this program and others. On top of that, giving them the opportunity to observe what other people and students have done is also one of the program's important goals. 4. Lastly, this program ought to give weight to the provision of an environment in which the teachers and students can interact well and effectively. It also functions as an engine that can uphold and maintain the students' research interests.