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

Teachers and students have found some delays in getting Correspondence School material andassistance frustrating. One primary school using the Correspondence School for seven gifted andtalented students, for the first time this year, is monitoring the effectiveness of this provision.Mentoring. One of the secondary schools identifies a mentoring programme as one of its moresuccessful provisions. This is run by the head of Student Support Services, whereby staff sign up tomentor students who are gifted in their field of expertise. People in the community are alsoapproached to be mentors, however, the mentors are usually teachers at the school. One of the primaryschools was in the early stages of establishing a mentoring programme for their Year 7 and 8 studentswith a local secondary school, and they saw this as promising.Competitions. Most of the case study schools use competitions for both primary and secondarystudents as a way of providing students with challenges and an opportunity to be acknowledged.Teachers felt that competitions provide a way of celebrating and recognising students’ abilities in avariety of areas such as mathematics, literacy, speech, drama, sport, and the performing arts.The schoolwide approach. One of the primary case study schools believes that their showcaseprovision is the inquiry process that is used in all classes. “It gives children such a scope to pursuetheir own interests and passions and when they’re answering ‘So what?’ and ‘Now what?’ and ‘Wheredo I go from here?’ questions.” These teachers believe that the students are not learning for the sakeof learning but that there is a reason – the ‘ecology of learning.’ It “helps build up positive attitudes aswell as their interest in learning.” During the first term, all children in this school participate in aninvestigation of learning styles, multiple intelligences, and inquiry learning to help them and theirteachers understand their individuality.Another coordinator considers the school ethos and philosophy of inclusion to be the strength. Settingup an inclusive environment has facilitated the identification of, and provision for, gifted and talentedstudents. An environment where all students belong and feel accepted allow talents to surface and benoticed. Encouraging the students to become motivated learners is viewed by this coordinator aspivotal:Ultimately I want the students to become highly motivated learners and I want to find waysthat I can help them to become really motivated and I guess the most exciting thing for meis getting teachers say to me ‘What have you been doing with these children of ours?’They’ve come back really buzzing.Successes. In discussing their provisions, schools identified a number of positive factors. Theseincluded gifted information folders and teacher developed resources, including units of work; foldersof ‘extra’ work for students to work on when they finish early or complete a task; professionaldevelopment; acknowledgement of the benefits for students (i.e., many teachers specificallymentioned interaction with like-minded peers) and the flow-on effect for their teachers; teacherexpertise, enjoyment, and willingness to try new things with a small group of students; carefulselection and placement of gifted students in regular classrooms and special programmes; opencommunication amongst staff; the use of parent and community volunteers to facilitate programmesThe following comments were indicative of those made when schools discussed their successes ingifted education programmes:[The students can] bounce off each other and feed off each other which isawesome.They appear to be free of intimidation and seem to be secure in a pastoral sense.It gives me a breather. The Xs in Form 2 wear me out with constant questions! …and theycorrect you all the time. They are just very open!244