Enrichment broadens the range of experiences for all students.
Enrichment encourages expansion of knowledge and skills in the regular teaching and learning program. It enables gifted and talented students to participate in learning based on their own performance and skills. It is an essential strategy for students who may be identified as at risk.
Enrichment activities include:
Assisting students to improve skills such as:
Students may be involved individually or as part of a group in a range of activities or competitions, in class, at lunch time or after school, e.g. chess, Future Problem Solving, Tournament of Minds, public speaking, Gould League, Science Talent Search, Value Adding Quest, Young Writer's Contest.
School-based club programs provide interest-based learning in which enrichment and extension can occur at the small group level.
The following points should be considered when developing a school club program:
These events provide the students with exposure to ideas, processes and techniques beyond the usual range. The opportunity to see and question experts working in their field provides motivation and encourages curiosity and questioning. This in turn can be the basis of further research, independent study and extension activities.
Ensuring a gender balance and cultural diversity in the selection of role models will help to promote equity and broaden the range of options open to students.
Students should be given increased responsibility for managing and organising activities, individually and in groups. They should be involved in all aspects of the research, planning and preparation for the excursion or visitor including the evaluation and follow-up activities.
| Example |
A visit to a health club/gym as part of the Health and Physical Education program, for example, could include a physical fitness assessment and guidelines for exercise. Students could later examine the exercise program for its component parts and determine appropriate activities that could be substituted at school. They could then develop their own class/individual exercise regime and monitor each other's or their own progress. This would be a useful program to run as a build-up to a school athletics carnival. |
Further activities which may develop are:
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Students need to be able to manipulate materials and handle equipment rather than being passive observers. It is important that lessons are organised so that all students have equal access to equipment. Activity-based learning is also an appropriate provision for students from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds.
Gifted and talented students need to be taught to use more sophisticated materials and equipment in order to expand their repertoire and enable them to carry out research independently.
Access to the Internet, yearbooks, census materials, thesauri and other specific reference materials should be encouraged and the necessary skills taught.
Provision of science equipment such as hand lenses, microscopes, dissection tools, prepared specimens and reference collections stimulates activity and enables students to work independently and at a greater depth than their peers.
Use of Information Communication Technology (ICT)
Students should be exposed to technology in the Early Childhood phase. This will encourage independence, responsibility and enable them to develop the sound operation skills needed to vary their research sources and presentation opportunities.
Correct use of equipment such as fax machines, video and digital cameras, tape recorders, still cameras, data projectors and computers should be taught and encouraged.
Students need to be able to select the appropriate ICT tool to enable them to present and organize information in a variety of forms. Whilst it is important that the operational skills are explicitly taught to all students - it is vital that prior learning and experience be recognised.
Some gifted and talented students may have difficulty expressing themselves in written form due to normal fine motor development but advanced cognitive functioning. CALD students may also have difficulty expressing themselves in this way. Use of a computer can relieve the frustration often experienced and enable students to produce an acceptable standard of work.
See also Instructional Strategies/ICT for more information.
Group work enables students of similar intellectual ability to interact and thus challenge each other. "What children can do together today, they can do alone tomorrow". - Vygotsky (1965)
When heterogeneous grouping is used as the major organiser, gifted students are in danger of serving as tutors to less-able learners for far too much of the time and missing the challenge of their intellectual peers (Clark, 1992 pg 332).
To ensure that gifted students are involved in real learning it is often more appropriate to place them with their intellectual peers, to work on the same kind of content from a more challenging perspective.
Groups may also be formed on the basis of interest in a topic, learning style, or a specific project. The use of single-sex groupings is an option that will promote equity in some situations. Both girls and boys will benefit from shared experiences that encourage collaborative learning, discourage dominance and value the role of each group member.
Sharing ideas through cooperative learning can stimulate higher levels of thinking. Looking at other viewpoints, achieving group consensus, seeking justification and defending points of view lead students to think critically and creatively. Bennett, Rolheiser and Stevahn in Cooperative Learning: Where Heart Meets Mind (1991) outlines the Basic Elements of Cooperative Learning as; positive interdependence; individual accountability; face-to-face interaction; social skills and processing
Competitions provide an ideal opportunity for students to work cooperatively in small groups on open-ended creative problems.
As well as developing skills for small-group learning, students need to develop independent learning skills. There are times when gifted students should work alone, to enable them to pursue an area of interest in greater depth and to foster independence.
Goal setting, planning, time management, self-evaluation and research skills are examples of independent learning skills. Access to the library/resource centre and familiarity with the layout, contents and procedures as early as possible in the student's school life will enhance and promote independence.
Discussion, communication, the sharing of resources and ideas, and the opportunity for students to critically evaluate group and individual products are important outcomes of both small group and independent activities.
Higher order thinking skills - levels of questioning
Gifted and talented students are able to work at higher cognitive levels than their age peers and are challenged by complexity and originality. They are able to think in the abstract earlier and therefore need encouragement via teacher questioning techniques to explore, experiment, solve problems, hypothesise and make judgements.
Thinking skills can be taught. Critical and logical thinking skills should be taught, practiced and applied. Activities which encourage the development of thinking skills should be included in each day's program. An emphasis on using, rather than acquiring, knowledge will assist this process.
Thinking skills can be developed through the use of:
Bloom's Taxonomy, which discriminates among levels of thinking and is a sound basis on which to develop questioning and activities.
Questioning which is open-ended will produce more creative responses and enable students to be more innovative and original.
The Divergent Questioning Technique is helpful in generating responses and can be applied to any learning area.
Students should be encouraged to set their own higher-level questions for themselves, each other and for research purposes
A problem-solving approach encourages students to think creatively, formulate and test hypotheses and develop and extend their thinking skills. They learn to elaborate and defend their ideas and conclusions and generally integrate and apply their knowledge.
Problem solving can be applied to all areas of the curriculum, and is most effective if integrated into daily lessons. Open-ended problems will generate many responses. There are many methods of problem solving and students should be encouraged to share and discuss their own techniques. Strategies for problem solving need to taught and practised, e.g. brainstorming, pattern seeking and recording in a range of forms.
Strategies such as CoRT Thinking (de Bono, 1986), Six Thinking Hats (de Bono, 1992), Parnes' Creative Problem Solving (PR 71) and competitions such as Future Problem Solving and Tournament of Minds provide excellent vehicles for skill development.
A creative classroom environment will encourage students to display creative behaviour.
Open-ended questioning and a positive response to students' endeavours will help develop their confidence and risk-taking abilities, while promoting and valuing "different" answers will foster imaginative responses.
Skills such as fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration, curiosity and complexity can be taught and need to be included in classroom programs.
CMIS - Curriculum Materials Information Services (CMIS) is a part of the Curriculum Directorate in the Department of Education and Training, Western Australia.
CMIS provides information and advice to Western Australian teachers to assist them in the selection and use of quality curriculum resources that support the Curriculum Framework. The following external links provide resources located in the CMIS Database related to enrichment:
VSG - Enrichment
The VSG is an online school, which specializes in providing enrichment courses to complement and extend the regular curriculum. The VSG works with schools and home schools to provide courses to challenge able students. VSG - Enrichment is an Australian based organisation.