Gifted and Talented Students

Extra Curricular provision for Gifted and Talented Students this year at the Business Academy has included 4 students participating in the London Debate Challenge Scheme. These students spent a day working on formal debating skills and participating in competitive debating. These skills were then further utilised and developed further in school in preparation for the inter house debating competition. Similarly, year 8 students were also invited to take part in another debate workshop at Cambridge University as part of the Aim Higher programme.

Gifted and Talented students have also been involved in several media projects in which they have created a DVD which presents their ideas, thoughts and work on different topics. Notable successes here have included the year 9 Pop Art project which compares Pop Art and modern graffiti as well as year 10 English projects on cultural poetry. Each of these will be showcased in a presentation at the end of the year but it is also hoped that they can be used in the teaching of those subjects to other students. One student evaluated her media as "thoroughly enjoyable" and wrote that "it was educational and fun and will teach younger students a lot of new interesting things. They will get to see and hear an in depth debate on a poem which shows older students opinions and interpretations. I think this project has boosted my confidence a lot too."

Furthermore, at the Academy we really want to not only celebrate the success of our high achieving students, we also want their view to be important. This is why we recently invited 8 of our most hard working and high achieving Gifted and Talented students to a special lunch with the Principal, Mr Duncan Spalding. During this lunch students discussed what they thought were the strengths of the Academy and what they felt we could do to improve things further or students. Students discussed several aspects of school life including enrichment and teaching and learning and came up with several suggestions which we are currently working on developing and implementing.

Overall, our main aim for Gifted and Talented students at the Business Academy is that every child is given the opportunity to achieve and succeed. However, we recognise that some students need extra support to enable them to achieve all that they are capable of. After analysing end of term report grades and effort levels up to Spring half term it became clear that some of our year 8 students were beginning to underachieve in several subjects. These were all students who either were not achieving the results that they are capable in terms of National Curriculum levels or students who are being graded as “unsatisfactory” in their effort. These students have all been allocated mentors from members of staff (both teaching and non teaching) who will act as mentors and coaches to find out why these students are not achieving and help to give them strategies that will provide opportunities for academic success.

Gifted and Talented Students

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