Talented kids tested

Gifted Year 4 Capes students pushed themselves last week with new and alternative learning opportunities at West Busselton Primary School for the Primary Extension and Challenge program.

The annual Challenge Day gave like-minded students a snapshot of the PEAC program, a part-time extension program for talented Year 5 and 6 students.

The PEAC program is a part-time withdrawal program traditionally for public school students in upper primary, but was this year offered to year four students to early-identify kids with higher level thinking skills.

PEAC teacher Julie Gardner said Challenge Day activities gave students open-ended problems to stimulate higher-order thinking skills. “It’s about mainly presenting them with open-ended challenges that they can take as far as they can,” she said.

“We do activities that don’t necessarily have a definite answer, we want them to use their knowledge and expand on that knowledge and actually start applying, analysing, and evaluating problems.

One student was selected from Geographe Primary School, three from West Busselton Primary School, and four from both Dunsborough Primary School and Vasse Primary School for the one-day learning event. WBPS principal Jamie Adair said investing time in younger students allowed them to monitor talented kids for when they reach upper primary.

“The thinking tends to be elevated because you’ve got high level thinking from every person in the group, its about a more like-minded group of people having the bar set a little bit higher,” he said.