Inspire – High potential and gifted education

• We are committed to recognising and nurturing high potential and gifted students, ensuring every student has the opportunity to thrive at our school.
• Our classroom practices support and extend high potential and gifted students.
• We identify students' learning needs in the classroom and use evidence-informed teaching practices to challenge and extend students. We provide learning pathways, including enrichment and extension programs and acceleration.
• Our supportive classroom environments promote a sense of belonging and encourage risk-taking, creativity and collaboration.
• Our teachers engage in professional learning to support the diverse needs of all students, including our high potential and gifted learners.

Students in our classes have:

• Differentiated tasks that adjust pace, complexity and higher-order thinking​.
• Formative assessment to monitor growth and adapt learning​.
• Advanced learning pathways, including accelerated or compacted content​.
• Explicit teaching of critical thinking and problem-solving strategies.
• Opportunities for abstraction, inquiry, and curriculum depth​.
• Tasks that promote choice, authenticity, and critical and creative thinking​ including cross-curricular projects.
• Flexible grouping for collaborative ideation and presentation​.
• Differentiated movement tasks and skill refinement in PDHPE​.
• Targeted learning goals for coordination, agility, and control​.
• Opportunities to take on lead roles in physical demonstrations or team strategy​.
• Supportive learning environments that enable exploration and self-assessment.
• Strengths-based feedback and goal setting.​
• Opportunities for leadership within the classroom​.
• Structured peer collaboration and reflection.​
• Safe learning environments that encourage confidence, risk-taking, and perseverance​.

• Links to other schools in our VoSS network in creative, sports and cultural areas.

• Our school recognises that every student is individual, and we provide flexible and diverse opportunities for students to explore and grow their strengths outside the classroom.

• At our school, every learner’s potential is our priority.

• Many students have high potential, and we help that potential to grow into something powerful.

• Our teachers find potential and nurture our students to be the best they can be.

• We are committed to developing high potential across 4 domains: creative, intellectual, physical and social-emotional.

• We challenge our students to think, create, lead and grow every day.

• Our school is a place of diversity and opportunity, where every learner belongs.

• We foster a culture of high expectations and equity in excellence, ensuring every student, regardless of background, has opportunities to develop their potential into talent.

• Our school offers a diverse range of opportunities across the 4 domains of potential: creative, intellectual, physical and social-emotional.

• Our offerings engage and challenge every student, including a strong focus on talent development for high potential and gifted learners.

• Inspire – High potential and gifted education is delivered in-class, across the whole school and department wide.

• Our school has a variety of supports available for students through a range of high potential and gifted opportunities.

• Evidence-informed teaching supports all students to achieve personal excellence.

• We know that potential exists along a continuum, where different levels of potential require different approaches.

• High potential students are those whose potential exceeds that of students of the same age in one or more areas.

• Gifted students are those whose potential significantly exceeds that of students of the same age in one or more subjects or areas.

• We use objective, valid and reliable measures to assess and identify high potential and gifted students’ learning needs.

• At our school, high potential and gifted students are assessed through:

  • ability tests
  • achievement tests
  • performance-based assessments
  • student self-nominations
  • pre-testing and formative assessment
  • teacher observations.

• We implement evidence-informed strategies to support talent development for high potential and gifted students.

At our school we offer:

• stem and coding
• academic competitions
• school performances
• visual arts and drama showcases
• sports squads
• peer mentoring
• student leadership
• wellbeing programs

• All NSW public schools have a range of differentiated learning opportunities, enabling students to thrive and reach their potential.
• Inspire – High potential and gifted education is delivered in our schools through a combination of in-class, whole school and system level programs, practices and procedures.
• The department is committed to ensuring equitable access to high potential and gifted education for all students, regardless of background or location.

We currently offer:

• The Premier’s Sporting Challenge (PSC) promotes whole-school participation in physical activity with leadership pathways and professional learning.
• The Representative School Sport Pathway and PSSA events enable our students to trial and compete in sports at regional, state and national levels, fostering discipline, commitment and collaboration.
• PSSA Knockout soccer competition
• Dorroughby Creative Arts Camp
• Todd Woodbridge Tennis Cup
• Valley of Small Schools (VoSS) STEM
• School swimming scheme