High potential and gifted education

“Advanced Thinkers: Where challenge meets support through explicit teaching, academic preparedness, and real-time data-informed learning.”

Focus Area: Deep Thinking, Academic Challenge & Evidence-Informed Mastery Learning

What this looks like at Rivendell

Rivendell students with high intellectual potential experience:

• Explicit, high-challenge instruction underpinned by Cognitive Load Theory, high impact HSC strategies, and structured “Regulate–Relate–Reason” readiness routines that prepare students for rigorous learning.
• Formative assessment cycles aligned with School Excellence Framework (v.3) elements Assessment, Effective Classroom Practice, and Student Growth & Performance, ensure stretch, depth and rapid feedback in our teaching and learning cycle.
• Differentiated learning adjustments, including acceleration, compacted curriculum, extension tasks and enquiry-based enrichment using the Differentiation Adjustment Tool.
• PLAN2 and personalised learning continua to track vocabulary, multiplicative strategies, and advanced disciplinary literacies/numeracies as part of schoolwide improvement measures.

Why it matters
The HPGE Standards emphasise deliberate talent development and high expectations for all learners. Rivendell School’s interdisciplinary tracking and formative feedback loop ensures that advanced learners are consistently stretched, supported, and recognised for their growth.

“Creative Pathways: Safe spaces for imagination, innovation and bold expression.”

Focus Area: Curiosity, Innovation & Multimodal Expression

What this looks like at Rivendell School

High-potential students in the creative domain experience:

• Opportunities to design, create and innovate, supported by relationally safe classrooms built around neuroscience principles and high impact collaboration protocols (e.g., focused note-taking for arts, gallery walks, peer critique).
• Differentiated creative pathways that allow students to demonstrate mastery through arts, digital media, performance, design thinking, or interdisciplinary projects—mirroring the HPGE policy’s call for domain-specific talent development.
• Accelerated and enriched creative tasks, including structured choice boards, open-ended problems, and teacher-designed provocations informed by the Differentiation Adjustment Tool’s creative-domain strategies.
• Cross-curricular collaboration between teachers, allied health (e.g., speech pathology to support expression/communication), wellbeing teams, and students themselves, strengthening student’s relational web, a key component for critical and creative thinking.

Why it matters
Creative talent is strongly linked to wellbeing, self-agency, and post-school success—key drivers of Our Plan for NSW Public Education. Rivendell’s trauma-informed creative practices encourage students to take healthy risks, develop confidence, and explore identity through expression.

“Physical Excellence: Movement-based regulation and personalised challenge.”

Focus Area: Strengths-Based Physical Literacy, Self-Regulation & Personal Challenge

What this looks like at Rivendell

Students with physical domain potential are supported through:

• Targeted physical literacy opportunities, including sport, movement, outdoor skills, and personalised fitness or skill-development programs.
• Integrated relational and regulatory strategies, where movement, rhythm, and patterned motor activity support cognitive readiness and emotional regulation.
• Differentiated physical challenges and leadership roles, encouraging students to set stretch goals, track progress (formative assessment in PE), and build self-efficacy.
• Access to allied-health-informed personalised supports (OT, physio collaboration where applicable) that enable equitable participation and excellence—even during periods of mental health recovery.

Why it matters
The HPGE Standards recognise physical talent as a critical domain. Rivendell’s whole-child approach integrates wellbeing, regulation, and growth to ensure that students’ physical strengths enhance their confidence, identity and school engagement.

“Leaders of Tomorrow: Building voice, agency and relational strength.”

Focus Area: Leadership, Empathy, Agency & Emotional Intelligence

What this looks like at Rivendell

This domain is where Rivendell’s setting is uniquely positioned to excel:

• Trauma-informed wellbeing practices and personalised regulation plans that create the safe, relational foundation needed for leadership development and social-emotional growth.
• Student Agency frameworks, where students learn to self-advocate, set goals, lead collaborative tasks, and reflect metacognitively using patterned and predictable  processes.
• Opportunities for leadership, such as peer mentoring, project leadership, event committees, and guided roles in wellbeing or cultural initiatives.
• Formative assessment of social-emotional competencies, embedded in homeroom routines, explicit teaching of collaboration, and adjustments from the Differentiation Adjustment Tool to extend advanced interpersonal skills.

Why it matters
The HPGE Standards emphasise that high potential in the social-emotional domain is foundational to student wellbeing, relationships, identity and future life pathways. Rivendell’s multidisciplinary team—teachers, psychologists, social workers, OTs, SLSOs—works collectively to nurture these strengths in deeply personalised ways.

Formative Assessment as our Core Process

Consistent with SEF v3’s emphasis on assessment, data skills and use, and reporting:

• Students’ talents are identified using formative assessment, teacher observations, multidisciplinary insights, readiness to learn indicators, and student voice.
• Talent development is tracked using PLAN2 continua, cross-curricular rubrics, personalised learning plans, and progress-monitoring tools.
• Adjustments are drawn from the Differentiation Adjustment Tool and applied collaboratively by teachers and allied health teams.
• Families are partners in this process—aligned with SEF v3’s expectations for high-expectations culture and strong parent/carer partnerships.

“High Potential and Gifted Education at Rivendell is a multidisciplinary endeavour. Teachers, clinicians, and support staff work together to ensure every advanced learner receives personalised challenge, emotional safety, and the explicit instruction required to grow their talent.”

This aligns directly with:

• HPGE policy expectations for supportive environments and talent development.
• The Rivendell Way’s explicit focus on optimising cognitive load, HSC readiness, trauma-informed pedagogy and universal language across staff.
• Australian Education Research Organisation’s (AERO) recommendations for coherent, sharply defined school planning practices that align with evidence.

Aligned with Rivendell’s key pillar of opportunity knowledge and the department’s pathways improvement measures:

• Students build opportunity knowledge: understanding course pathways, industry links, senior study options, VET, TAFE, wellbeing supports, and post-school opportunities.
• High-potential students are supported to engage in extension pathways, portfolio development, accelerated units where appropriate, and transitions into mainstream schools or senior secondary environments.
• Opportunity knowledge is embedded through explicit teaching of goal-setting, organisation, reflection, and future planning.

This connects Rivendell’s HPGE approach directly to state priorities in Our Plan for NSW Public Education and aligns with AERO wellbeing research and recommendations.