Tournament of Minds

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11 September 2019

Students from Holy Saviour Parish School, Vermont South, at Deakin University showcasing their talents at the Tournament of Minds competition. After weeks of preparation, a team of students from Holy Saviour Parish School, Vermont South, arrived at Deakin University to showcase their talents at the Tournament of Minds competition.

Tournament of Minds offers teams of students ‘the opportunity to solve authentic, open-ended challenges that foster creative, divergent thinking whilst developing collaborative enterprise, excellence and teamwork’. Holy Saviour selected the STEM Challenge incorporating Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths … and it was certainly challenging. With no prior experience in the competition, and with limited school time available to meet in a busy term, the students showed outstanding initiative, teamwork, resilience, problem-solving skills and enthusiasm – even getting together for several hours at school on two weekends. The parents of the students were also very supportive, offering their time to help supervise and guide the students, as well as providing snacks, tools, sewing machines … anything that would help the project come to fruition.

The end result was an Honours Award for the school’s first attempt, which is very difficult to achieve. It means that the students placed in the top 10% of their region, competing against many teams with prior experience of the competition. What an achievement!

None of us knew what to expect at our first meeting. We all got handed notepads, Mr Rossiter started reading the challenge and all of the rules, and we took notes. The challenge was to design a carousel that spun around and went up and down, while collecting DNA samples to preserve for the future. On the carousel, we had to pick five endangered species and criteria to select them. It wasn’t going to be easy. (Andrew Chard)

When we arrived I was nervous, I started to feel dizzy, everything was happening too fast. When I was inside, I found Mr Rossiter and Brian sitting nervously waiting for the carousel. As I sat next to them, we saw Layla and Luke with the carousel in their hands. They had bad news: the carousel broke. Way to make us more nervous. (Arianna Mejias)

When we entered the theatre to present to the judges, everybody was so nervous. We had remembered our lines, but then we had to see if we could get the carousel to work … and it did. All the parents clapped and the judges thought it was pretty cool. When we left the theatre, we were all so excited. There was also a Spontaneous Challenge, where we were given a challenge on the spot and we had to act out a solution with a whole lot of original ideas. The challenge was that there was a dinner party and everybody went silent and we had to say what happened next, with judges listening to us while we discussed it. (Nicholas Schubert)

Congratulations to all 2019 Tournament of Minds participants and to those schools who placed first or received honours in the regional competitions and the state final.

State finals – First Place
St Kevin’s College, Toorak (Team 1, Language Literature)

State finals – Honours
Our Lady of the Sacred Heart College, Bentleigh (Team 1, The Arts)
Sacred Heart School, Kew (Team 3, Social Sciences)
St Kevin’s College, Toorak (Team 2, Social Sciences)
St Patrick’s School, Lilydale (Team 1, The Arts)

Regional competition – First Place
Sacred Heart School, Kew (Team 3, Social Sciences)
St Kevin’s College, Toorak (Team 1, Language Literature)
St Kevin’s College, Toorak (Team 2, Social Sciences)
St Patrick’s School, Lilydale (Team 1, The Arts)

Regional competition – Honours
Catholic Ladies’ College, Eltham (Team 4, The Arts)
Genazzano FCJ College, Kew (Team 1, The Arts)
Holy Saviour School, Vermont South (Team 1, STEM)
Marymede Catholic College, South Morang (Primary Team 6, Social Sciences)
Marymede Catholic College, South Morang (Secondary Team 3, Language Literature)
Mount Lilydale Mercy College, Lilydale (Team 2, Social Science)
Our Lady of the Sacred Heart College, Bentleigh (Team 1, The Arts)
Our Lady of the Sacred Heart College, Bentleigh (Team 2, STEM)
Sacred Heart School, Kew (Team 1, Social Sciences)
St John’s School, Mitcham (Team 1, The Arts)

Regional competition – Spirit of Tournament Award
St Patrick’s School, Mentone (Team 1)