Held at Newcastle Grammar School, the team of seven, students Brody Allan, Nash Hughes, Patrick Howlett, Bridgette Chapman, Daniel Smith, Ruben Macey and Kai Bridge entered the Language Literature discipline “Guest Who?” and walked away with first prize.
Tournament of Minds is a problem solving program for teams of students from both primary and secondary years. They are required to solve demanding, open-ended challenges from one of the following disciplines: Science Technology, Engineering Mathematics, Social Sciences and Language Literature.
The St Joseph’s team was required to overcome many challenges before the students began to tackle their long-term problem. As we are aware, collaboration is key to successful teamwork – they are to set goals, work through a timeframe, delegate, lead, follow and compromise.
As the Regional winners, the team then went on to compete at the NSW Tournament Final held at the University of NSW on Sunday 11 September.
The St Joseph’s team once again competed in the Language Literature division where it was given three hours to explore and prepare a solution to a long-term challenge and also respond to a Spontaneous Challenge. Their presentation topic, “What Do You Mean?”, was very entertaining, focusing on homonyms, homophones and homographs causing strife and miscommunication in the English language.
The students missed out on making it through to the Australasian competition, but as their facilitator, I am extremely proud of their camaraderie and their commitment to Tournament of Minds.
Well done team!