Magis report 

The final event in the Intergeneration Research Program, the second morning tea at Mercy Village was held on Monday and was a great success. The research program run by Griffiths University and led by Gabriela Di Perna involved Magis Year 7.1 and 7.2 classes completing a series of interviews with six residents of Mercy Village in Wembley over a period of three months, then working in teams of two or three to write biographies which have been published in a hard cover book Looking Back. Congratulations to all students involved on your excellent work, and warmest thanks to Mercy Village and Griffiths University who made the opportunity possible.

Round two of the WADL interschool debating took place at Christ Church Grammar School on Tuesday evening, and results were excellent with four of our six teams who competed recording excellent victories, but it was concerning that several students made themselves unavailable at the last moment, with no students actually notifying teachers that this was the case.  All sides have reserves and there should almost never forfeit except in the unusual case of multiple illness to team members.  Congratulations to those who competed so impressively including one team that forfeited but debated with two speakers, and warmest thanks to our wonderful team of coaches and managers, Ms Dawson, Mrs Glass, Mrs Lumley, Charlie Richards, Alex Panther, Ben Linsten Tatiana Kurniawan and Rory Hewson for their excellent work assisting.

Students now have the opportunity to nominate for three major gifted and talented competitions, the Ethics  Olympiad, Creative Edge Thinking (formally OPTI-minds), and Tournament of Minds. The first two are run directly via the Magis Program, and Tournaments of Minds is a Magis event run by the Learning Enrichment. We are only able to nominate two teams for Ethics Olympiad, but can nominate several teams for Creative Edge and Tournament of Minds which are similar exciting programs run on weekends at Curtin and Edith Cowan Universities respectively.

The third in the series of House Academic Challenge events, Arts & Humanities, has been completed this week and results should be finalised by Monday and published in next week’s newsletter. Congratulations to all homerooms. We have again had over 250 competitors from Years 7-12 and the highest number came from Years 11 and 12. Koolyangarra House is leading the Arts-Humanities so far, with Years 7-8 results still to be finalised. Warmest thanks to House Coordinators who assisted with the series of three competitions held in the GBLT this week.

Jim Miller

Magis Gifted and Talented Program Coordinator