The Adeyfield Academy Scholars

As part of the Gifted and Talented programme and the school-wide Teaching and Learning focus on critical thinking and raising aspirations, the “Scholars” aims to extend student engagement and attainment across subjects and year levels. It provides higher-ability, gifted and talented students with an opportunity to develop their knowledge, interest and capabilities in the subjects of greatest interest.

The Scholars programme is arranged by subject and year group, although this is only a guideline, and students can complete tasks from any list, with the addition of the future learn program.

Each subject is divided into activities. Activities include creative tasks (doing, making, and synthesising), external competitions and challenges, and research and critical thinking tasks. The latter are mostly focused upon a philosophical question about the nature of the discipline requiring critical thinking, an investigation of contested ideas and concepts within subjects, a task that requires interdisciplinary and cross-curricular thinking and research or a task requiring the development of further knowledge within their discipline and raising aspirations, beyond the formal curriculum.

In addition to subject-specific activities, there is also an associated reading list, which includes books, films, television documentaries, YouTube channels, podcasts and publications.

Finally, there will be an appendix with more general guidelines and resources as to how to research and to write in the form that many of the tasks require: reviews, discussion papers and research reports.

We will promote the Scholars to students in the following ways.

1. All parts of the curriculum will be made available to parents and students. Students will be encouraged to share their completed activities, competition entries and evidence of engagement with the reading list, which will take the form of reviews, summaries, or further research. This is through Unifrog.
2. The Scholars will be linked to the house system, mirroring the celebrating success initiative. Any work that students choose to undertake may be submitted if wished as indicated below.

A more targeted promotion of the Scholars will take place in group meetings. This will allow a targeted and bespoke program, using future learn, to accompany subject specific activities. This will be through parent and student questionnaires with a focus on student led development.