Astra Program – Highly Abled Learners

At Woodville High School, the Astra Program provides a comprehensive framework to support our highly abled learners. The program is built around four key areas of provision: Differentiation, Enrichment, Extension, and Acceleration. These pillars ensure that all students are provided equitable access to a challenging, standards-based curriculum through research-informed practices that foster deep, authentic, and personalised learning. Astra is designed to meet the diverse needs of our students, nurturing their talents, promoting engagement, and enabling every learner to reach their full potential.

Differentiation
Differentiation is the process of enabling every student to access the curriculum by adapting content, process, product, or the learning environment in response to students’ readiness to learn, interests, and learning profiles (data and prior knowledge). Personalised learning and curriculum negotiation are key features of differentiation, ensuring that all students have the opportunity to develop the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed for success.

Enrichment
An enriched Years 7–12 curriculum at Woodville High School focuses on providing students with regular opportunities to engage in deeper, broader, and more complex learning experiences beyond the standard curriculum. Enrichment activities are designed to align a student’s current level of mastery with more sophisticated instructional practices that challenge and extend their thinking. These activities often take the form of project-based learning, interdisciplinary investigations, research tasks, and real-world problem-solving scenarios. Students may also participate in external competitions, leadership programs, mentorships, or community-based learning projects. Additional excursions, guest speakers, and university partnerships are incorporated to expose students to diverse perspectives and fields of study, fostering curiosity, creativity, and a love of learning.

Extension
Extension opportunities at Woodville High School provide students with tasks and experiences that stretch their critical and creative thinking within the regular classroom setting. Extension is differentiated to ensure tasks are appropriately challenging for individual students, offering advanced content, higher-order questioning, and open-ended investigations. Students may be asked to explore complex concepts, apply knowledge to unfamiliar contexts, or engage in sustained inquiry projects. Extension activities foster independent learning skills, resilience, and sophisticated problem-solving abilities. For highly able learners, extension ensures that learning remains stimulating and engaging, preventing underachievement and encouraging intellectual risk-taking.

Acceleration
Acceleration at Woodville High School, is a highly personalised strategy that supports students who demonstrate exceptional achievement or potential in specific learning areas. Acceleration may occur within a subject (subject-based acceleration) or, in some cases, across year levels (whole-grade acceleration), depending on individual student needs and readiness. Students accessing acceleration pathways undertake curriculum content designed for older peers, allowing them to move through learning at a pace commensurate with their abilities. This approach fosters motivation, maintains academic engagement, and enables students to pursue areas of strength and passion without being limited by traditional year-level structures. Acceleration decisions are made carefully, involving teachers, families, and the student, with support plans and regular monitoring to ensure both academic success and wellbeing.