Gifted and Talented (G&T)
A number of students at the school fall into the Advanced Learner (or ‘gifted and talented’) category. The focus of all classroom practice is to challenge students in their learning, stretching all to achieve their best. The school’s policy for Advanced Learners will ensure in-class differentiation which maintains a high level of challenge as well as Individual Plans.
Students with specific talents – e.g. in sports, music or particular skills – have help in clarifying those talents so that the school can work with the student and his/her parents in finding the right long-term coaching and support. Advanced Learners – those performing in the top five per cent of students in a particular cohort – are identified through teacher assessment and by benchmarking students against international test results. They receive support from a teacher with training in recognising and supporting giftedness, based on the most up-to-date accounts of international best practice.
The progress of Advanced Learners will be monitored in the school’s data tracking system, which will highlight where specific students slow down or accelerate in their learning progress. Each department is required to have curriculum plans that provide for the enhancement of learning in each module for Advanced Learners. In addition, these students have access to an annual program that regularly includes such activities as:
- masterclasses
- module extensions
- added challenges
- complex problem-solving
- peer teaching
- research tasks
- cross-curricular applied challenges
- transformations (i.e. opportunities to re-author work in different genres or for different audiences)
- multimedia presentations, for example in video-supported poetry
- logic challenges (e.g. in control and sensing, and in coding)
- competitions
- group challenges, to foster leadership skills
- self-determined work
Where progress is shown by the tracking data (or teacher judgment) to have slowed for gifted students, individual case conferences are organized by Grade leaders to discuss ways to regenerate motivation and progress for the child concerned. Parents are consulted and collaboration is encouraged.