Gifted Awareness Week - March 17 to 23

Belonging.

When it comes to gifted education, what does belonging mean? Does it refer to a sense of connectivity with ones’ tribe? Does it call into question how and where gifted education fits into our education system?

According to Mind Matters, a sense of belonging provides young people with purpose, meaning, self-worth and social control, all of which are contributors to positive mental health. Students with a sense of belonging are more motivated to participate actively in the life of the classroom than those students who do not have this kind of experience. Conversely, the feeling of not belonging or social isolation can lead to a range of negative — and under some circumstances, long term — consequences, both physical and psychological.

We invite you to come on a journey of belonging this Gifted Awareness Week.

Melinda Gindy
National Facilitator- Gifted Awareness Week Australia

For more information about Gifted Awareness Week click here.

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Differentiation in Action - Parent Information Session

Please complete this google form to indicated which session you will be attending.

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Joys and challenges of raising a gifted child

Here's another great article and blog that discusses the joys and challenges of raising gifted children along with offering supports and suggestions.

"Often people think of gifted kids as high achievers. They assume if a kid gets good grades, is bright and working ahead, he or she must be gifted, right? This is a common misconception. One is not necessarily an indication of the other. One measure of giftedness is IQ. A person can be in the gifted range of intelligence (IQ over 120) and struggling academically for various reasons. And a person can be of average intelligence (IQ of 80-119), but be highly motivated and working very hard, and excel."

Full article - click here

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Let's Talk About Emotional Overexcitability

"Emotional overexcitability is easy enough to take notice of. The child who is so nervous they make themselves sick. The child who doesn’t want you to leave because they’re so attached to you. The daughter who screams when her brothers laugh at her. The child who hides behind the couch and sobs when Bing Bong disappears in Inside Out. The child who wakes up at 2:30 am every single night just to come get a reassuring hug. The child who cries two months after watching a movie where a character was bullied. The daughter who clings to you, soaked with tears, and cannot stop crying because she just loves you really much. The child who takes offense, builds strong attachments, leaps with joy, holds grudges out of pain and forgives quickly out of hope. The daughter who cries daily, hourly, but also laughs loudly, deeply. The child who is compassionate, angry, loving, fearful, frustrated, annoyed, embarrassed, elated. The child who just has a lot of feelings."

To read the full article, click here.

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St Mary's is a Newman Selective Gifted Education School. What does this mean?

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Join us for our Newman Symposium and Learning Celebration.

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How to tell if you've got a gifted and talented child, and what to do about it

How to tell if you've got a gifted and talented child, and what to do about it

We are very luck at St Mary's that all of our staff are regularly involved in considerable Professional Learning opportunities to better understand the needs of gifted students and how to cater for them, so not all of this article applies to our context. Some information here is very useful as are the links to the related articles.

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Caught in the middle: How to help gifted children survive the middle school years

Caught in the middle: How to help gifted children survive the middle school years

A post by Gail Post, Ph.D on the challenges faced by gifted children in the middle school age bracket and how we can help them navigate this time.

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Bright Now Podcast

Bright Now- 

By Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY)

A podcast about parenting and educating gifted and talented kids from Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth

Bright Now by Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY) on Apple Podcasts

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Congratulations to our Year 6 Tech Girls Competition Finalists! You are Superheroes!

Our two Y6 teams are finalists in the Tech Girls Are Superheroes Challenge for 2018!

The RWorld team is a NSW Primary School Finalist . Congratulations to Aisling, Elise, Lucia, Mya and Phoebe.

The Pet Finder app team is a finalist in Australian United Nations sustainable development division – Education. Congratulations to Jasmine, Jedda and Sybilla.

Read on Below to see their pitch videos and read their business plans.

Our Y6 "Tech Girls" worked under the guidance of eLearning and Science/STEM teacher Mr Butt and industry mentors Georgie Drury - CEO of tech company Springday (Mum of Henry Hay Y2), Lynn Dang - Talent Acquisition Leader, Microsoft Australia and Christle Lee - Experience Technologist at Avanade. 

The brief was to design an app to solve a real-world problem with the aim to make a difference locally or globally.

The girls also launched their app at a special event attended by 

Team A - R World

Pitch Video and Demo
https://youtu.be/lNvdcJVpk2Y
Team A Business PlanRWORLD, ST MARY'S CATHOLIC PRIMARY SCHOOL
WHY ISN’T ANYONE RECYCLING?!? This is a question that comes up a lot but most people don’t know the answer to this. Well, we know. Many people are not bothered, or maybe it’s because recycling is too much of a trouble to do! If you install our free app then recycling will become much easier to do. But what else is involved in recycling? REUSING! Which is also why we have made reshare - a program within the app to make reusing (or sharing) easier too. So help save our world by using Rworld!

Team B Pet Finder AppPitch Video and Demo
https://youtu.be/FYbHiQ4FUEM

Team B Business Plan
PETFINDER, ST MARY'S CATHOLIC PRIMARY SCHOOL (NSW)
Research has proven most missing pets are located close to their home. Our Petfinder app, helps pet owners locate missing pets by allowing them to create their pet’s profile with photo, name and breed. When a pet goes missing it activates pet owners and neighbourhoods to report and locate missing pets. When a neighbour locates a pet via the app, it will be taken to the vet to contact the pet’s owner and to check for injuries. The app will appeal to pet owners, council rangers, veterinary clinics and everyone in our community!

Our tech girls presented their app at a recent symposium.


Working with mentors and representatives from NS Council.

The girls created working app prototypes.
































The girls presented their apps at a recent expo at Barangaroo with girls from many schools over NSW.

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