Tournament of Minds

Twelve students from Years 5 and 6 have been working really hard over the past two terms in preparation for the Tournament of Minds competition, which was held last weekend at Edith Cowan University.

The girls have been working together developing their team building and listening skills and using their creativity to solve a long-term challenge. To do this, students needed to understand the challenge, research relevant information and devise a script for a play, to run for 10 minutes. The girls also had to make all of the props and present their solution to the challenge in a creative and entertaining way. Throughout the process, co-ordinators may give encouragement but cannot give advice or direction to the students at all.

Tournament of Minds helps students to develop real-life skills. Students work on things like creativity, problem-solving, cooperative learning and team building, experimentation and risk-taking. The educational program was developed in Victoria in 1986 and is now run throughout Australia and internationally.

The two Santa Maria teams competed in different disciplines: The Arts and Language/Literature. Both of the challenges were interesting and allowed for the girls to be creative and innovative. There was in excess of 70 teams competing in the Primary division of the competition and whilst the girls acquitted themselves well, they were not successful in going through to the State Finals.

The girls who were involved were:

Valentina Danielle, Year 5
Jasmine Collins, Year 5
Angelica Stokes, Year 5
Gabrielle Ranallo, Year 5
Ruby Marks, Year 5
Isabella Redden, Year 5
Nitya Chowdhary, Year 5
Griffin O’Brien, Year 5
Matilda Tate, Year 5
Erin Wallace, Year 5
Tara Shanahan, Year 6
Emily Sadler, Year 6

Some of the things the girls said about the competition included:

“The hardest thing was getting all of us to agree on one solution”
“The hardest thing was trying to work as a team”
“I loved being involved”
“It was really fun and exciting”
“I met girls I really liked” and
“I really want to be in it next year!”

What A Term! So Many Opportunities – Jennifer Oaten

As I look back on the past nine weeks, I am so grateful for who we are as a community and what we have achieved. Through the dedication of our staff and the enthusiasm of our students, we have established new connections, immersed ourselves in opportunities and worked through challenges.

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