“We want to make sure every child in every school gets a great education..” were the words of Prime Minister Julia Gillard last week in announcing an initiative for disabled students, a group that every Australian would recognise as being disadvantaged.
Another, albeit smaller, initiative for a different group of students who are often at an educational disadvantage was also made public for the first time last week.
The Goulburn Street Primary School presented their Galileo Initiative at a meeting of the Tasmanian Association for the Gifted on Thursday evening.
Goulburn Street Primary School’s Galileo Initiative arose out of the political advocacy undertaken by the Tasmanian Association for the Gifted; the initiative aims to identify, and address the educational needs of, the gifted children throughout the school.
While the commonly held belief is that gifted students will do well, no matter what, the truth of the matter is much more complex and there are significant numbers of gifted students who develop problematic behaviours that do not allow them to achieve their full potential if they are not sufficiently challenged at school.
The Galileo Initiative is action research based and has to date identified a number of students at the school who fall into the gifted range. Some of these students were the more obvious high achievers but others were those who teachers identified as having potential but not achieving it.
The school is working on a variety of strategies to ensure that these gifted students are sufficiently challenged with work that is different to that of the rest of their classmates. The older students are working on project-based extensions in mathematics or humanities based problem solving. The support and involvement of classroom teachers is being activated to ensure that methods of making learning interesting and challenging for these potential high achievers is being implemented in all primary classrooms.
While the Gaileo Initiative is still in its early days, it will be interesting to see how it develops and to see how many effective and innovative strategies can be implemented on a restricted budget to ensure that the school’s tall poppies grow and flourish.
The Tasmanian Association for the Gifted (TAG) is a voluntary Parent and Teacher association, which aims to stimulate, support and conduct activities that will provide maximum awareness of and opportunity for the development of students with gifts and talents.
The other upcoming TAG initiative is its state conference for parents and teachers in Launceston in July, see www.tasgifted.com for more details.
Picture: Jenny Sullivan, Teacher; Carol Mackel, Principal & Jenny Taylor, Teacher – all from Goulburn Street Primary School
