The Extent, Nature and Effectiveness of Planned Approaches in ...

curriculum and enrich the students in day to day learning. The enrichment activities are designed sothat the students are keen to come to school on Fridays to participate in this programme. The studentsare involved in all of the enrichment activities. This is different to their Electives Week where thestudents opt in to do a particular hobby or activity that is a new experience for them. The school’sextension programme is about catering for those students identified as being the most able. Currentextension areas for this rotation are maths, science, art, and writing. The extension programme isbased upon teacher strength and school need at the time. One of the school’s strategic planning goalsfor this year is to teach leadership skills, therefore a leadership extension programme was alsooperating at the time of the case study visit.The most unsuccessful provision, or rather the one that needed the most modification, happened whenthe first Friday programme began with two programmes running side by side. The extensionprogramme ran for two and a half hours and the enrichment programme ran for three and a half hours.Interestingly, the format was changed after the extension children lobbied the staff because they weredisappointed to be left out of the enrichment. Currently the two programmes run at different times ofthe day.The most promising practice is considered to be their combination of enrichment and extension withelectives. These provisions allow all children to be involved in something “a bit special,” yet doesallow specific extension to really extend those more able children. Elective options also providechildren with the choice to “really explore something for a decent amount of time,” so these factorscombine to contribute to a very successful programme that caters for the needs of all children,including those who are gifted and talented.The special character of this school is also important to gifted and talented education. Being a Catholicschool, children are given leadership roles for whole school liturgies and masses, plus classroommasses. Interpersonal skills at this school are valued and some children show skills in the area ofcaring. Children are identified in some areas of emotional intelligences, while recognising that theones demonstrating knowledge of the Bible, for example, are academically able, rather than spirituallyable. There is a perception too that the Catholic school philosophy helps to play a part in the way thatstaff commit to making the best provision they can for their students. This philosophy filters down tothe children who are considered to be really good at recognising and promoting each other’s abilities.The coordinator reported that do not have a “tall poppy syndrome” at this school.A common thread throughout both the in-depth and focus interviews was the way that staff areprepared to move outside their comfort zone and engage in a little risk taking to make the programmesucceed. Staff explained this as “we expect the children to do it so we should do it too.”208