Writeup: Nambour State College Pinnacle Program

The underpinning principle of Nambour State College’s new Pinnacle Programs lies in identifying children's passions and interests and tailoring learning around them.

“The Pinnacle Program is fundamentally based on the Australian curriculum but we have taken our learning a step further by expanding the program to allow for our student’s specific skills, talents and interests,” said Junior Secondary Head of Department, Emma Cracken.

The original Pinnacle Program was always about academic excellence, infused with creativity. This year the program has expanded to include Pinnacle Creatives, Pinnacle Innovators, Pinnacle Scholars and Pinnacle Athletes.

“Our Pinnacle Program students have a specialist lesson once a week and are able to explore their particular area of interest,” Ms Cracken said. “We are really excited about our Pinnacle Athletes’ own Olympic Games, which are coming up.”

At the moment, the Pinnacle Program is available to Year 7 students and will continue into years 8 and 9.

“Next year we are planning to introduce Pinnacle Change Makers and Pinnacle Cultivators,” Ms Cracken explained. “Change Makers is focused on community improvement and leadership while Cultivators is about agriculture and hands-on team work”.

Students who are interested in the Pinnacle Program are required to fill in an application and preference is given to students who have participated in the Young Pinnacle program.

“What I am looking for is a history of good behaviour and effort,” Ms Cracken said. “Students do not have to be the highest performers, they just need to show an interest and willingness to give the program their best effort. It really is a wonderful opportunity, and a lot of fun as well.”

• Pinnacle Scholars: “I chose Pinnacle Scholars because I really enjoy learning new things and pushing myself to become the best I can” – Amelia. 

“Pinnacle Scholars is helping me with the first year of high school because we get to choose what we suit and head to our goals in life” – Luey.

• Pinnacle Innovators: “I chose Pinnacle Innovators because I’m interested in technology and science and Maths. This term we are programming a game to enter a competition with” – Jed.

“One of the best things about being in Pinnacle Innovators is because it’s fun to make games and the teacher is very good with technology. The game our group built is based on a puzzle.” – Levi.

“This class works better for me because I like I using computers more than book and using Scratch to make things” – Dylan.

• Pinnacle Athletes: “Pinnacle Athletes was my number one choice because I wanted to be able to do more things and focus on combining sport and academics” – Charli

“This term we’ve been creating an outdoor game, and next term we’ve been focussing on coaching which will help us focus on sports and get better at them for more enjoyment” – Charlie

“An example of us weaving sport into the learning would be a recent Science lesson on chromatography where we used the context of drug testing at the Olympics (urine tests use chromatography to check for anabolic steroids). We developed our comprehension skills by using an article on drug testing that linked to our science experiment on chromatography. – Mrs Danielle Larsen, Science/Maths teacher

• Pinnacle Creatives: “Our teachers bring creativity into our lessons by doing art, music, creative experiments and more diagrams in all our lessons” – Jayden

“The best bit about being in Pinnacle Creatives is combining art with the learning” – Stella. Writeup: Legacy Properties Qld