Gifted & Talented

Who are we?

We are students from The Hayesbrook School, ranged across several years from Year 8 to Year 11. Each of us are gifted within one to several subjects from the whole curriculum; such as geography and English.

What do we do?

We meet up each and every week. We are used as the student voice on subjects which affect 'Gifted and Talented' matters. Examples of events we have organised are a Puzzle Day, where G&T pupils were rewarded. Also we have organised a quiz evening held within the school to test parents. At the moment we are also helping to organise a Gifted and Talented day involving a variety of schools in the Tonbridge area.

My son has been identified as Gifted and Talented...

...but what does that mean?

Following is the breakdown of the criteria which is used in each subject when identifying our gifted and talented students, making it subject based and therefore specific to you and your son.  This will hopefully help you to identify your son's strengths and further your understanding of extra responsibilities he may have around the school and other pressures he may be under as a consequence of his natural ability.

According to the DfE, pupils are identified as gifted if they achieve, or have the ability to achieve, significantly above average in one of the National Curriculum subjects other than art, performing arts or physical education.

Pupils are talented if they achieve, or have the ability to achieve significantly above average in art, performing arts or physical education compared with other students in the school at their year group.  Therefore a student can be identified as both 'gifted' and 'talented'.

Physical Education

Approach to Work

They may:

• be confident in themselves and in familiar contexts
• take risks with ideas and approaches, and be able to think 'outside the box'
• show a high degree of motivation and commitment to practise and performance

Effective Performers

They may:

• be intelligent, independent, thoughtful performers, actively forming and adapting strategies, tactics or compositions
• be able to reflect on processes and outcomes in order to improve performance, understanding the close and changing relationship between skill, fitness and the tactics or composition of their performance
• be good decision makers and be able to take the initiative, often showing high levels of autonomy, independence and leadership
• be creative, original and adaptable, responding quickly to new challenges and situations, and often finding new and innovative solutions to them.

Body Skilfulness and Awareness

They may:

• have a high degree of control and coordination of their bodies
• show string awareness of their body in space
• combine movements fluently, precisely and accurately in a range of contexts and activities

Some pupils may have unusual abilities in specific aspects of the programme of study or activity, such as:

• evaluating and improving performance through leadership
• acquiring, developing and performing advanced skills and techniques
• conceptual understanding, shown through the sophisticated selection and application of advanced skills, tactics and compositional ideas for their age

Provision for the gifted and talented

As a specialist sports college we actively encourage individuals to participate in sport in an extra curricular context and adopt leadership roles within sport. Talented boys have the opportunity to participate in a wide variety of school teams and clubs that are on offer. We also run a number of different programmes which aim to develop pupils' confidence and leadership skills in a sporting context. For example the sports leaders programme teaches pupils how to lead and conduct coaching sessions to younger pupils in the school and groups from Sussex Road primary school.