Gifted and Talented

Drumragh Integrated College is committed to providing an environment which encourages all students to maximise their potential, and this clearly includes students who display exceptional ability or talent.

Gifted and talented students are those who are achieving, or who have the potential to achieve, at a level substantially beyond most of their peer group. This may be in any of the following areas:

• Intellectual aptitude or talent;
• Academic ability;
• Visual and performing arts;
• Sport and physical skill;
• Leadership ability;
• Creative and productive thinking;
• Mechanical ingenuity;
• Practical ability.

Drumragh’s Gifted and Talented Programme aims to:

• Create a learning environment of high expectations and aspirations, in which it’s ‘cool to be clever’ and where all sorts of talents and abilities are valued;
• Accommodate the needs of gifted and talented students, recognising and building on what learners already know, avoiding unnecessary repetition and setting appropriate learning intentions (‘HOTS’ – higher order thinking skills, not ‘MOTS’ – more of the same);
• Use varied teaching approaches to make learning an enjoyable and challenging experience, matching tasks to learners’ maturity and preferred learning styles;
• Encourage independent thinking and open inquiry;
• Select and use questions that stimulate higher order thinking;
• Use class discussion effectively;
• Develop young people’s confidence, self discipline and understanding of the learning process (metacognition), helping them to think systematically, manage information and learn from others;
• Use peer and self assessment to make young people partners in their learning, help them to evaluate their work and reflect on how they learn;
• Ensure the achievement of the highest examination results possible.

We recognise that gifted and talented students have needs and opportunities of their own, regardless of whether their talents are academic, sporting, practical or creative. As a person-centred college we aim to provide these students with enrichment and extension in their learning, and appropriate levels of challenge and support.

We aim to make sure that the learning experiences of our gifted and talented students:

• Develop breadth (for example, enrichment through a broader range of texts and tasks)
• Encourage depth (for example, providing extension through detail and complexity)
• Accelerate the pace of learning
• Promote independence
• Support reflection and self-evaluation.