St Columba’s is a Gifted Education Lead School in the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle. Our focus is on identifying Gifted Learners and assisting with the process of developing talent by providing specific opportunities for learning, training and practise. We have high expectations for all students.
The school’s Gifted Education Mentor (GEM) and a Gifted Education committee assist teachers with collating and analysing data, identifying the strengths and needs of students and providing appropriate strategies to meet their needs.
St Columba’s is committed to planning and embedding a sustainable whole-school approach to gifted education within the school’s overall philosophy of learning. We deliver a flexible curriculum that meets and furthers student learning needs. We are committed to further identifying pathways that meet the learning needs of gifted students including via contemporary research-based pedagogies.
Our teachers actively engage in professional learning opportunities in gifted education. All teachers aim to implement differentiated teaching, learning and assessment strategies to challenge and equip gifted learners to optimise learning and progress.
We acknowledge that students learn in different ways, therefore programs must be developed that contain several different options for learning. These can be inclusive of but not limited to: accelerating the mastery of basic skills and reorganisation of the curriculum according to higher level skills and concepts; engaging students in problem-based learning and project-based learning; and, providing students opportunities for making connections within and across systems of knowledge.