At Wetherby Kensington, our aim is to identify and encourage boys who excel in one area of, or across the curriculum as a whole. We believe that gifted and talented pupils need to be identified and educated in a manner that keeps them fully engaged in the learning process. Furthermore, their natural ability needs to be acknowledged and harnessed, and not curtailed by a curriculum that they may find too restrictive.
At Wetherby Kensington we define gifted and talented children as those pupils who are functioning at a level significantly above that of their peers.
Gifted pupils: those with the potential to exhibit a superior performance across a wide range of endeavours and excel at multiple disciplines
Talented pupils: those with the potential to exhibit superior performance in one area of endeavour
Class and specialist teachers are responsible for identifying those children with exceptional ability in a particular subject or area (talented) or across a range of subjects or areas (gifted). We strive to detect gifted and/or talented children at the earliest possible stage of schooling and to monitor their progress and development.
At Wetherby Kensington, we recognise that gifted and talented children may exhibit the following general characteristics:
- quick, insightful and original thinking
- ability to reason, associate and link ideas and relationships and use these to solve problems
- working well under pressure and not being phased by difficulties
- demonstrating the ability to argue, question and reason using logical connectives
- demonstrating the ability to think laterally and tackle problem solving from a variety of angles
- generalising from a study of examples
Boys identified as gifted and talented in one/several subject area(s) are registered by the school and may be provided with an ILP (individual learning plan).
These children are challenged and encouraged to go beyond their comfort zone in order to keep them engaged in the learning process. A wide range of extension and enrichment materials and resources are provided to stimulate their interests and enhance their thinking skills. These are regularly updated to ensure that children have the best resources available to them. Additionally, some boys may be encouraged and supported in completing a self-directed project (between home and school) on a topic that is pertinent to their particular talents and interests. The overriding focus is not on providing children with “more of the same”, but is firmly on developing lateral thinking and problem solving skills and on encouraging creativity.
