Extending children’s individual gifts and talents is at the heart of our approach to learning at Saint Christina’s School. As part of enrichment and extension opportunities available to all children, our school has welcomed the addition of the Mind Lab curriculum. This is a highly specialised thinking skills enrichment curriculum in which all children, from the age of five onwards, participate every alternate week. The Mind Lab curriculum has been received with great enthusiasm by the students and teachers at Saint Christina’s School. Through a range of interactive games and activities, the children are facilitated to engage with the different cognitive demands of interactive play with a partner or team as they develop and refine game strategy, consider alterative perspectives, weigh up alternatives and evaluate their successful use of individual and group methods. Mind Lab has broadened and inspired the children’s learning as they transfer the skills they have gained to other contexts such as negotiating social situations with peers, persevering on the sporting field and enhancing their metacognition and their self-perception as a learner.
In addition to additive curriculum programmes such as Mind Lab, children also experience learning enrichment through both curricular and extra curricular opportunities at Saint Christina’s School. Children in all classes from Nursery onwards experience a myriad of excursions and outings designed to enrich their learning, from informal discovery walks and observations of seasonal change in nearby Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill to specialised curriculum enrichment programmes in partnership with amongst others, The British Museum, The Tate Galleries, The Wallace Collection, Royal Albert Hall, London Zoo and the Greater London Authority, City Hall. Saint Christina’s School is proud to offer a broad and balanced extra-curricular programme which promotes skill and enjoyment of the creative arts, sporting enrichment and academic extension. Extra-curricular opportunities include, amongst many other pursuits, Ballet, Horse Riding, Netball, Choir, Latin Club and Greek Philosophy, French Club, Public Speaking and Irish Dancing.
Where a child’s identified gift or talent requires additional extension, children are referred to our specialist Learning Support Teacher who works in consultation with specialist teachers in the school, the child’s teaching team and family. Saint Christina’s School values opportunities to work in partnership with parents and we encourage parents to complete a learning aptitude questionnaire for their child so that the needs of their son and/ or daughter can be understood in context of the particular skills and learning aptitudes that he or she is displaying at school and home.
Saint Christina’s School is proud to support and celebrate the achievements of all children in their diversity of skills, gifts and talents. We look forward to continuing this tradition in the future as our pupils continue to develop and flourish.
Miss Gabrielle Villani
Gifted and Talented Co-ordinator