PACE: Enriching opportunities for gifted and talented students
Mango Hill State School provides an outstanding curriculum program, valuing excellence, teamwork, innovation, respect and commitment. The school program is designed to be engaging and challenging for all students, supporting them to reach their full potential.
In every year level, there are students who require modifications to the curriculum program to ensure the provision of appropriate challenge for their learning. These modifications enrich the curriculum and provide additional learning opportunities, in particular for those students who may be gifted, talented or who may show special academic talents.
At Mango Hill State School, a range of modifications are made to the content, process, product and/or learning environment to compliment the regular school and classroom programs and include:
Clustering: assigning groups of students to the same classroom (or neighbouring classrooms) with teachers who are suitably trained and skilled in delivering programs for gifted and talented students. This modification provides opportunities for the teachers to address the unique academic needs of groups of students.
Ability grouping: creating small flexible groups of students within whole class groups so that teachers can focus their instruction and resources, creating a customized curriculum for each group of students. For example, a small group of students may be provided with additional maths activities to extend their understandings or provided with opportunities to read books at a higher level than other students within the class.
Vertical timetabling: ensuring school and class timetables provide opportunities for students to access particular learning areas in the year ahead of their current year level, accelerating the learning for individual students in their area of interest. For example, a student in Year 4 could access the Year 5 maths curriculum if students in Year 4 and 5 complete their maths learning at the same time.
Curriculum compacting: reducing the repetition for groups of students by pre-testing and determining what will be learned next. This provides an opportunity for the teacher to replace the existing curriculum with more appropriate knowledge and skills when the students have already demonstrated mastery.
Inquiry enrichmnet projects: students work in conjunction with teachers to develop questions of inquiry related to current units of work. Students work to investigate their inquiry questions providing them with opportunities to engege, extend and enrich learning. Students develop their abilities to become independent, critical and creative thinkers.
Data collected by class teachers, support personnel and parents is used to identify individual students who may require curriculum modifications and to determine their personal goals and needs. Modifications are developed in negotiation with the Mango Hill State School Student Support Committee, class teachers, support personnel, parents and students.