Tournament of Minds

This year Tournament of Minds was back in full force. We had 7 teams competing, including 3 senior teams and 4 junior teams involving many students from Years 4-10. When the problem was released, the teams had 6 weeks to come up with ideas, characters, costumes all while having a great time along the way.

The challenges involve creating a solution to a complex problem and presenting that solution in the form of a fully prepared 10 minute skit to a panel of judges at La Trobe University in Bendigo. The performances are always entertaining and lots of fun!

Unfortunately, this year we were disrupted by the ever-present lockdowns and restrictions. Regardless, our amazing teams pushed through, overcoming any obstacle that they faced. Due to the lockdowns, the requirements of the challenge were changed. This year the teams had to send a digital recording of the performance. Teams had to then record their performance in just one take and send that in for judgement. 

But before that could happen, once again we were put into lockdown, making recording a live performance impossible. Instead, the students had to adapt and change once again showing their amazing flexibility and ingenuity as the performance had to be recorded online using Zoom.

We were lucky enough to have 3 teams emerge victorious, including Primary Arts, Primary STEM and Secondary Social Sciences. A massive well done to those teams and their facilitators. We also had two teams achieve Tournament Honours, Primary Language Literature and Secondary Arts, well done to you all!

I would like to give a massive thank you to the staff involved in TOM this year, Mr Ruddick, Mr Parry, Mrs Tobias, Ingrid Hocking (12M), Sophia Ginis (12R) and of course our amazing MiC Mrs Bath, without them it would not be possible to organise all the teams and rehearsals. The students are forever grateful for the work they put in. 

States here we come!

Aidan Clemens (11 Millward)

TOM Captain 2021

Report from the Social Sciences Team

The tournament of minds program gives students an opportunity to develop their skills in a number of areas.

Our team consisted of four Year 6 students, two Year 5 and one Year 4.  The opportunity to work with students from other year levels is fun experience.

The Social Science problem was to pick a global issue from a list of 17 sustainable development goals. My team picked war. Next, we had to choose 3 people from the list provided and 1 extra of our choice. The task was to create a problem and then resolve it. 

Through our play, we explored options of dealing with conflict instead of making a war.  We demonstrated this with a favourite teddy bear being stolen and then talking through the issue instead of just declaring war.  The focus was on finding a solution that both sides were happy with. TOM helps us to learn many things including, co-operation, team building, time management and great communication.  It was very enjoyable, and I had lots of fun with my team.

Stephanie Carlson (6 Frew)