Academic Excellence

Tournament of Minds

This term our Academic Excellence students have jumped straight into the Tournament of Minds (TOM) competition. We have three teams, comprising of Years 7 to 10 students, who have just six weeks to find a solution to their chosen challenge. The students must research, write a script and prepare a skit that presents their solution as well as make all props, costumes, music and ICT by themselves. 

For the STEM challenge, Birds of TOMadise, the team needs to build a bird that can fly two different ways. They also need to include ICT to explain the maths behind their design. For the Arts challenge, Immersion, the students need to build an immersive experience based off a famous artists work. They have chosen ‘Ballerina’ by Banksy. For the Social Sciences challenge, Clash of the Ages, the team discovers artefacts from two different time periods which clash and make a difference to our future. They have chosen to ‘discover’ a scalpel and penicillin so that surgery becomes safer, and maybe even totally AI.

Each team will present their solutions to a group of judges at Edith Cowan University in Joondalup on Saturday 2 September. On this day they will also participate in a short Spontaneous challenge. The students have been meeting during recess, lunch and after school to practice working as a team for the short challenge and to be able to find their best solution to the long challenge and a fantastic way to present it. Credit to the students for their dedication to the competition so far. 

Thank you to Ms Melda Lim and Ms Linda Gillham for taking on the role of being facilitators for the teams. 

Well done and best of luck for the competition!

Prime Minister's Spelling Bee

Do you know how to spell these words?

• Knack – a particularly clever or skillful way of doing something successfully.
• Enjoin – to order or strongly advise someone to do something.

A small group of Year 7 students were chosen to participate in the Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee last week. It was an online competition where the students had to try to correctly spell thirty words in the fastest time. They all put in a valiant effort and enjoyed the challenge. We look forward to offering it again next year.

Year 7 Homework Help/Peer Mentor Program

All Year 7 students are welcome to attend Homework Help on Thursdays from 3.30pm – 4.30pm in the Prémontré Library. Students can seek assistance with homework for any subject, revision of topics they are finding difficult and general organisation (e.g. diary, locker, etc). All they need to do is ask!

Thank you to the Year 9 Mentors who are volunteering their time to assist the Year 7’s.

Mrs L Cardenia

(Mathematics Teacher and Academic Excellence Co-ordinator)