This article is brought to you in part by the Australian International School Malaysia (AISM).

As part of our Gifted and Talented programme at Australian International School Malaysia, every fortnight AISM Principal Dr Deborah Priest has been extending a group of talented Years 6 and 7 Mathematicians. She facilitates challenging activities that make the students think creatively and divergently. Students who are bright at Mathematics are accustomed to quickly working towards the correct answer in familiar situations, so it is important that the situations are unfamiliar, interesting, and engaging. Recently, students were introduced to the Mayan numeral system which uses vigesimal (Base-20) positional notation, a system used in the ancient Mayan civilization to represent numbers.

AISM’s philosophy is to enrich the curriculum and to provide opportunities which extend and challenge all students from the Junior School through to the Middle and Senior School through:

• an extensive co-curricular programme of cultural, academic and sporting activities • gifted and talented programmes
• outdoor education programmes
• service learning programme
• leadership development
• support for digital literacy and independent eLearning
• participation in inter-school events and competitions
• school-wide activities such as ScienceWeek, LanguagesWeek, BookWeek, Japan Day, International and Team Building Days The culture of AISM is to develop confident young students who are motivated to achieve their potential and who leave school with a genuine love of learning and an enthusiasm to share their talents and abilities as global citizens.

A version of this article was originally published in The Expat magazine (April 2017) which is available online or in print via a free subscription.