Triple Success at the Tournament of Minds!
Our winning team - Sasha Watkins (Year 9), Daisy Irving-Hyman, Pippa Wilcox, Catherine Balnionis and Katerina van Wulfften Palthe (Year 8) and Katherine Boudar and Sherry Zhang (Year 7) came up with a story of mystery and intrigue which incorporated a few well known literary characters, to explain the disappearance of books.
The culmination of six weeks of hard work saw our three Secondary Tournament of Minds teams receiving outstanding results at the Regional Finals on Saturday 22 August.
Both the Maths Engineering team, facilitated by Ms Lee Brandt and Mrs Janette Matt, and the Language/Literature teams, facilitated by Mrs Danielle Smith, received Honours for their problem solving and creative responses to the challenges they were faced with.
The Language/Literature team which was ably facilitated by Mrs Kim Waters won the final and will now proceed to judging at the State Final to be held at La Trobe University in September. What an amazing achievement for our girls! The Tournament relies solely on the students’ input and no external assistance is permitted, and so our students have worked very hard.
The Maths Engineering team - Edwina Beard, Julia Milone, Sarah Griffiths and Elizabeth Paterson (Year 9), Emily Drew (Year 8) and Kate Clark and Hilary Collett (Year 7) - constructed a device to enable a message to be communicated over a number of objects. They were also required to present an explanation about the sort of message being communicated, why it needed to clear the obstacles and the importance of the communication system they had constructed.
Our Language/Literature teams had to ‘Tell a Story’ about the disappearance of books in the world. They were required to creatively explain and suggest a solution for why books didn’t exist and present their solutions using a variety of devices. One team - Monique Lau and Katie Zhang (Year 9), Sarah Lee and Alexandra Langdon (Year 8) and Rebecca McNally, Sarah Monkhouse and Elizabeth Wang (Year 7) entertained the audience with a story set in a circus, using plenty of colourful costumes and jokes to explain why books had disappeared.
Our winning team - Sasha Watkins (Year 9), Daisy Irving-Hyman, Pippa Wilcox, Catherine Balnionis and Katerina van Wulfften Palthe (Year 8) and Katherine Boudar and Sherry Zhang (Year 7) came up with a story of mystery and intrigue which incorporated a few well known literary characters such as the Cheshire Cat, Harry Potter and the White Witch, to explain the disappearance of books.
Overall, all three teams performed brilliantly on the day and participated with exemplary team spirit, enthusiasm and creativity. Well done, girls!
From Karyn Murray, Coordinator of Gifted and Talented Programs