Reach: 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.
Excellence programs: providing an opportunity for selected students to participate in specifically-designed workshops and activities to extend and enrich their understandings and skills in specific learning areas e.g. English Excellence for Years 1 to 7; Maths Excellence for Prep to Year 7; Sci-Connect for Years 6 and 7.
Personal projects: allowing selected students to explore an area of interest in detail, working with a mentor to plan, research, implement and present learnings related to a particular project.
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.
Personal goals: setting individual learning goals for all students based on their current strengths and areas of need, providing opportunities for all students to reach the next milestone in their learning journey.
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 SS Support Committee, class teachers, support personnel, parents and students.