GATE

Gifted and Talented Education

About GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) at QPS

At Queenstown Primary School we believe that like all students, gifted learners have particular learning needs. In order to meet the specific needs of this group of students we provide a differentiated curriculum for students that are identified as Gifted and Talented. This is about meeting a basic human right by providing an education that meets the need of the individual.

Identification of these students comes from a range of sources including parent identification, test data, staff identification, performance or clinical testing by a suitably qualified professional.

The areas of gift can be from a range of human endeavour and our programme is based around current international best practice such as Francois Gagne's model which states that the top 10 percent of people across all socio-economic, gender and cultural backgrounds fall into the gifted category and that giftedness can be actual or potential. We also recognise that high potential does not always equate to high academic achievement.

Research clearly states that this cohort of students does best when they get the opportunity to work with "like minds," which is now done within class and team groupings across the school.

At QPS we provide a range of opportunities facilitated by specialist teachers to attend and take part in project based learning. This is where our GATE students get to work with mentors and experts and to follow the class or team PBL in more depth or from a different perspective negotiated with the teacher.

We also aim to teach them social responsibility and the importance of giving back to their community and to society as a whole.

Passion Projects

A Passion Project is an opportunity for the GATE student to either follow their area of passion/interest in depth over time or to explore possible new passions/interests. This is a facilitated learning session where we utilise as many outside experts and resources as possible so that the students get to work alongside experts or mentors from their chosen field.

Research clearly indicates that Passion Projects are particularly important for GATE students as these students often have abiding and intense passions or areas of interest and these projects are a great way to engage these students with their learning.

These projects also allow real world success for twice exceptional (2E) gifted students who may otherwise experience very little success in their day to day mainstream education.

Chess - an educational overview

Chess is a great educational game that brings together players of all ages, backgrounds and abilities.

Chess helps teach self control, forethought and planning. Chess teaches patience, calculated risk taking, consequences and persistence, it also teaches mathematical skills and international survey results clearly link chess to improvement in overall academic performance.

For these reasons chess is now mandated as a curriculum subject in over 30 countries around the world.

Chess at QPS

At QPS we have a Chess Club that meets in the GATE class every Thursday at lunch times. The Chess Club is open to all QPS students and they come along and play competitive leaderboard chess.