CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS

Presenter: Michelle Parsons-Sim

Three small rural schools, one big collaborative idea to differentiate for their gifted students and staff.

This workshop unpacks a thinking programme, incorporating “best practice” for gifted students, developed by three rural New Zealand primary schools. The audience will be invited to record their “known unknown” questions relating to the programme, and these will be answered through a multi media presentation and a “hands on” challenge. This workshop will be of particular interest to schools interested in establishing a collaborative learning community to support and nurture their gifted students. Habits of Mind (Costa and Kallick, 2000) and a concept curriculum underpin the thinking strategies in this programme, and within this workshop, the school’s identification procedures, “thinking” planning and sequence of staff professional development will be outlined. Attitudinal change to thinking and learning has been monitored within the programme over a three year period, and this will also be discussed. A strong collaborative “thinking” learning community, involving all three schools has emerged, and this will lead us to reflect on “Achieving Sustainability” for gifted students in rural school clusters.