Gifted Awareness Week - a time to reflect on success & next steps

Gifted Awareness Week has just passed (13-17 June) and as VLNP’s Gifted coordinator, I’m currently putting together the 6-monthly progress report for the funding we’ve received for our gifted learners. I've put together a few insights, highlights and next steps for you to explore. 

Engagement: Our specialised programmes, Complex Thinking and Mentoring, are humming! The discussions in Complex Thinking are engaging and reflective - one of recent conversations was on the difference between the concrete and the abstract.

And the projects students have settled on in Mentoring are inspiring! We have hockey shirt designs for an actual team, a short story based around the life of a Ngai Tahu leader, and a Scratch game based on the Mars Rover to teach users about the laws of physics - just to name a few! Check out Ari talk about her podcast project...

Students in our regular programmes are tapping into their interests and connecting with others, even taking their VLNP learning next level participating and winning competitions: 

Our survey, which is currently out, has provided some great feedback so far, and we’ll use it to inform programme improvements.

Diversity: our gifted learners are more diverse, including more students who identify as Māori, as well as Pasifika. We also have a nearly even mix of girls and boys. We celebrate this fair representation but keep it as a focus and are trying new initiatives such as Pasifika language week competitions to keep pushing in this direction!

Where can we push further?

Connection: We love that gifted learners are having conversations about their learning with teachers, peers and whānau, but we'd like to do more to engage teachers and families.  A Meet the eTeacher for Complex Thinking and Mentoring is in the works!

The Y9/10 gap: We have a few year 9s in our programmes, but we’d love to see more and collaborate with our secondary VLN on learning pathways. We’re aiming to provide specific programmes and mentoring opportunities in semester 2 just for them!

I’m excited to report these (and more!), but more importantly I’m excited to be a part of the learning for many but by no means all of these students. If you’ve got students who would be interested in participating in our prospectus programmes for semester 2, register here.

Jenni Hammonds (Gifted Lead, Curriculum Development Lead)