Gifted & Talented

GIFTED & TALENTED PROGRAM

Mrs Donette Firkins

In 2018, the Gifted & Talented program focused on introducing new courses to the College.

Firstly, a revamped Year 9 Flex program was introduced, which aimed to help the students understand fallacies and how they are used in arguments by politicians and advertisers to ‘deceive’ and influence their audience. The Year 9 Flex students also continued participating in philosophical Communities of Inquiry. The students read source material and generated open-ended questions to discuss. These discussions encourage students to make evidence-based statements, ask questions, clarify concepts, make counter claims and develop a deeper understanding of the topic under discussion, and a tolerance for a wide range of opinions and ideologies.

The Year 8 Flex students created panel discussionstyle documentaries, demonstrating the eight common responses used in Communities of Inquiry, including: questioning, providing examples, counter examples and conclusions; presenting arguments and reasons; building on another person’s point; and clarifying concepts. Topics included the live export trade, the use of plastic bags and substance abuse. They also engaged in other team activities, such as building spaghetti and marshmallow towers and the Future Problem Solving program.

The Flex program continues to have a strong philosophical component, which develops independent, critical, creative and collaborative thinking skills. The development of these skills reflects many of the stated General Capabilities as outlined in the National Curriculum.

Another goal achieved this year was the introduction of the Chevron Powering Careers in Energy program. The program aims to increase energy literacy in schools to improve students’ skills and training outcomes. On successful completion of the program, students will receive points towards their ATAR scores and their participation in the program may lead to traineeships, internships and future employment with Chevron. It will be run as an elective for Year 10 students next year.

This year, we also participated in two competitions. Firstly, we sent four teams of eight students from Years 7–10, to the da Vinci Decathlon in April. Our boys performed strongly in Mathematics across all teams.

Lastly, the year ended with the Philosothon, which was again hosted by Trinity College. This year, 21 schools participated. It was the best performance to date for Trinity College, with the School coming seventh overall and three of our students – Thomas Tranter (9.8), Michael Tassone (10.5) and Joseph Dawson (11.1) – scored in the top ten of their respective year groups. Myles Brown (8.5) and Connor Wilson (8.6), both in Year 8, participated in two rounds each and scored strongly in each of their rounds. It was a truly collaborative event thanks to the Mary Rice Centre, the Music Department, our 2019 Prefects who directed visitors to Gibney Hall, Marcus Petrillo (9.3) and Liam Cooper (9.3) who were our photographers, and Leon Rocca (11.2), who ensured that the results for each round were delivered safely to the scoring team. We look forward to another busy year of interesting and challenging activities in 2019.

Ms Donette Firkins

Gifted & Talented Coordinator