Talented primary school students gather for a special art day
Josh Childs with his completed work
Golden Bay’s primary schools have found an innovative and co-operative way to acknowledge their responsibilities to gifted students.
Last Friday, 12 talented artists from years five and six gathered in the Takaka Primary School library for a whole-day art experience with local art teacher Pene Ralph.
Central Takaka, Motupipi and Takaka each sent four students to the art day. Each student had demonstrated a particular aptitude for and interest in art, and the day gave them the chance to learn new skills and complete a major piece of work. They also mixed with like-minded students from other schools as they concentrated on an individual project they could develop in any way they chose.
Pene was specifically employed for the art day. She devised an interesting project involving a tea-towel, a painted background, some stencil-cutting and some screen printing. The students took their very impressive completed works home at the end of the day.
Takaka Primary deputy principal Tre Sylvawood was a prime mover in the gifted students’ initiative.
“By putting the gifted children from three schools together we got a good-sized group to work with,” said Tre. “The schools shared the cost of the day out of our ‘gifted and talented’ budgets. There are lots of reasons for working like this: we can take advantage of the range of expertise in our community, the children have their talents recognised by their peers and by themselves and they get a decent amount of time to concentrate on a subject they really like. Talented students often respond really well to being given plenty of time to develop their ideas. They like working at their own pace too. A special day like today’s art day gives them the chance to do that.”
Ferne Bethwaite (9) from Central Takaka School was enjoying her day. She said that she knew a little bit about screen printing before Friday but had learned some new things too.
“I’m going to give my work to my Mum,” said Ferne.
Eva Wilson (10) from Takaka Primary said that art was her favourite subject and that the art day had been fun.
Pene was kept very busy by the process but said that she had enjoyed her day as well. “These children have been great fun to work with.”
The art day is intended as the forerunner for similar initiatives in other subjects, Tre explained.
“There are challenges involved in diagnosing our gifted students and developing programmes that cater for them,” she said. “But we owe it to the most talented ones to give them the recognition and enriched learning opportunities they deserve.”
Neil Wilson
