Gifted and Talented

Launch is a program that supports students to explore their passion, create, discover and to launch into lifelong learning.

We are committed to providing rigorous, relevant and engaging learning opportunities to all students in line with the Australian Curriculum.

Our teachers explicitly embed high order thinking skills within their curriculum, so that all students can increase their thinking capacity and creativity.

We believe that all students have the potential to grow their skills and intellect through their studies. Growth Mindset strategies are integrated throughout the program.

In Junior School, we recognise that it is important to identify students who show high intellectual ability and potential in order to nurture and enrich their abilities and talents. Students are invited to take part in a withdrawal program that is designed to stimulate and extend students. Entry to these programs is on a needs basis.

Gifted and Talented Students are invited to take part in an extension program designed to enrich learning. This ensures gifted and talented students reach their potential. Programs are targeted to meet individual student needs.

Students are invited to attend if they meet some of the following criteria:

• Teacher referral
• Results and recommendations from psychological assessments
• Information received from parents
• Strong academic performance reflected in school grades or results from external competitions eg University of New South Wales subject competitions
• Strong performance in NAPLAN, PAT-M/PAT-R through ACER

Extension English and Mathematics classes are offered throughout all secondary year levels to allow students to be challenged via additional enrichment activities, curriculum compacting and acceleration to match individual learning needs. Selection criteria is based on teacher observation, previous academic attainment and standardised test scores. Students are able to transfer into an extension class during appropriate times of the year.

Many competitions and extra-curricular opportunities are available for students of all ages.

2022 Achievements

FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge

Our team of seven Year 7-10 students worked hard over 16 weeks of lunch time and after-school preparation to achieve awards in both the state and national competitions winning:

• Core Values Award in the State Competition – The team displayed excellence in demonstrating the FIRST Lego League's Core values of Discovery, Innovation, Impact, Inclusion, Teamwork, and Fun!
• National Trophy for Best Robot Design - The team flew to Melbourne to compete in the National Championships on Saturday 3 December, following their fantastic achievements at the State Finals.

Computational and Algorithmic Thinking Competition (CAT)

Emmaus Christian College had 23 students from both our South Plympton and Brooklyn Park Campuses who participated along with 17,532 students nation-wide.

We are extremely proud of all our students who were willing to be challenged. Congratulations to the four students who achieved a Distinction and the nine students who achieved a Credit.

CSIRO Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge

In 2022, Emmaus students from Year 5 to 7 participated in the National Competition:

• Two teams achieved a Distinction

• One team achieved a Credit

• Seven teams achieved a Merit

SASTA Oliphant Science Awards

Congratulations to:

• Caleb (Year 9) who achieved first prize with his investigation on Which metals dissolve the most when introduced to 2M hydrochloric acid?

• Hannah (Year 9) who was awarded second place with her inquiry on: How effective is bleach to remove certain stains?

• Maggie (Year 9) was awarded the prestigious "Wine Australia" prize which is given to the most outstanding entries, from either Posters or Scientific Inquiry, that highlight food chemistry for her detailed inquiry on What makes some tea more acidic than others?

• Ethan (Year 6) for winning an "Honourable Mention" for his poster on Natural Histories.

South Australian Computational Linguistics Olympiad (SACLO)

Five Emmaus teams from Middle and Senior schools, consisting of 23 students, competed at Prince Alfred College. The students were in teams of four and had two hours in which to decode using sparse clues, ancient and foreign languages including an Aboriginal dialect.

Think Challenge

Two Emmaus teams of Year 8 and 9 Students attended the academic Think Challenge competition Temple College at Paralowie in February and November. The students competed against other Christian colleges in the areas of: Mathematics, History, Art, Poetry, Religion, Science, English, Engineering Logic and reasoning and General Knowledge.

Our Emmaus teams won First place in: History and Politics, Engineering, Mathematics and Business Innovation. They came Second place in Science.

One of our Emmaus teams came First overall for the day and excelled in the team spirit of fitting 27 students inside an A4 piece of paper that was strategically cut to make a continuous paper strip.

Da Vinci Decathlon

Teams of eight students competed against 23 other schools from across Adelaide in the all-day Academic Competition in June. Congratulations to our students for their impressive results:

• Year 5/ 6 Team:

  • 3rd place in Engineering

• Year 7 Team achieved outstanding results:

  • 1st place in Code Breaking

  • 2nd place in Ideation

  • 2nd place in Creative Producers

  • 5th place in Cartography

• Year 9 Team:

  • 3rd place Cartography

  • 3rd place English

All three of our teams were publicly commended with their attitude and respectfulness.

Legacy Junior Public Speaking Competition

Ben and Bradley, (both Year 9) competed in the competition, preparing a five-minute speech about one of Legacy's values: Social Justice, Compassion, Personal Sacrifice, Voluntary Service and Mateship.

The second component of the competition was the impromptu speech where they had 15-minutes to prepare a two-minute speech on the topics, "What makes me happy" and "Making a Difference".

Both Year 9 boys spoke with confidence and had a strong presence about them.

Congratulations to Bradley Turland for progressing through to the State Finals and winning third place!

Rostrum Senior Public Speaking Competition

Congratulations to Jamie Sutton (Year 11) who reached the State Finals.

Debating SA Competition

We had over 60 students participating in this 2022 season in 10 teams from both campuses.

Many of our students won speaker of the night!

Two of our teams: Brooklyn Park Year 5/6 and our Senior Year 11 team reached the quarter finals.