Gifted and Talented Report
How are Newman students enriched in their classes?
In Newman classes students can expect to be challenged through higher order thinking. This involves the transformation of information and ideas. This transformation occurs when students combine facts and ideas and synthesise, generalise, explain, hypothesise or arrive at some conclusion or interpretation. When students engage in the construction of knowledge, an element of uncertainty is introduced into the instructional process and the outcomes are not always predictable; in other words, the teacher is not certain what the students will produce. In helping students become producers of knowledge, the teacher’s main instructional task is to create activities or environments that allow them opportunities to engage in higher-order thinking.
Thinking should be deep! Deep knowledge involves establishing relatively complex connections to central concepts. Knowledge is shallow, thin or superficial when it is not connected with significant concepts or central ideas of a topic i.e students just receive or recite factual information through repetitive routines.
If the needs of high-ability students are not met, they can become disengaged. If the learning is too easy, high-ability students may not develop persistence, which is often referred to as ‘grit’ in psychology.
Cathcart (2005) provides a list of the needs of high-ability students:
- Challenge: high-ability students need challenging tasks and resources at their point of need
- Interaction: high-ability students need opportunities to interact with other high-ability students
- Higher order thinking skills: high-ability students need opportunities to extend their:
- thinking
- problem solving
- metacognitive skills
Speak to your daughter about the type of learning happening in her classroom everyday. Ask your daughter’s teachers in the upcoming parent teacher interviews about how your daughter is being enriched in her learning.
Senior Ethics Olympiad
Congratulations to the Senior “ethletes” who very impressive in their arguments involving some very tricky ethical dilemmas.
The team of 4 (Yolanda Busetto, Alessandra Carlo, Siena Sardelic and Grace Saoud) competed against a number of high schools across NSW and whilst they did not place, they were highly commended.
The competition had contemporary examples of relativism and the girls had to use their knowledge of ethical theories such as consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics to build their arguments.
One dilemma was whether bullfighting in Spain should be banned. Is it better for the bull to die in battle or to be killed later for meat consumption? Are we being ethnocentric if we insist it should be outlawed?
Congratulations ladies on showing great courage!
Mrs Colreavy’s Conundrum
Email: rachael.colreavy@syd.catholic.edu.au with your answer. Correct answers will win a prize.
Taken from: https://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/school/parents/secondary/verbalreasoningpractice.pdf
