Magis report 

Congratulations to Ms Daisy Farley and the John XXIII Mock Trial team which had an outstanding victory in round one of the competition at the Supreme Court this week. The team now tops the premiership table on percentages.  Our ten interschool debating teams had a mixed set of results in round one of the Western Australia Debating League (WADL) competition on Tuesday, with several teams losing very narrowly.  In a night that involved for most students first experience and some difficulties setting up with the zoom  platform, our two most outstanding performances came from the outstanding Year 8 team of Sasha Pallis, Noah Mintz, Catherine Gazia, Charlie Pronk and Tom Beach, which defeated  a strong Penrhos team, and the impressive Year 7 Novice 3 team of Blake Kavanagh, Chris Cooney, Heath Randall, Lydia De Francesco and Tyler Shan which defeated St Hilda’s. Congratulations to all students who represented the College. Special thanks to Ms Lumley, Mr Connellan, and our wonderful alumni coaches, Rory Hewson, Charlie Richards and Ben Linsten, who gave wonderful support to debaters on the evening and at training. This coming week is preparation week for the second round of fixtures on Tuesday, 29 March.

Week one of the Mental Maths section of the Magis House Academic Championship has seen another excellent response from students and some superb performances. Years 10, 11 and 7 were completed this week, and marking of Years 10 and 11 has been completed. Loreto won the Year 11 section and St Louis Year 10, with Koolyangarra House second in both and other houses all very competitive. James Mitchell and Amerie Chai in Year 11 and Tom Syminton, Angus Furness and Joseph Kilcullen in Year 10 were the first place getters, all with the exceptional score of 28/30 in this challenge, whilst Samuel Laing, Nic Carello, and Daniel Doran in Year 11, and  Xavier Jeffrey, Maya Mintz and Massimo Torre in Year 10 very close behind. Full results will be released after the Years 8, 9 and 12 sections are completed this coming week.

Our next major competition will be the John XXIII Public Speaking Championship, and nominations will be called for in the next week. Heats will be held at lunchtimes in weeks 8, 9 and 10, and the grand final featuring the top three from each year group  will be in week two of Term 2. Students may speak on any topic, and the time limit is three minutes for all speeches.

Th Drone Club, Dungeons and Dragons and Shakespeare Clubs  are all up and running with excellent enthusiasm, whilst Dr Ylenia Casadio is facilitating participation in the Sleek Geeks Science competition, and we will be having a couple of students in the first round of the WA Schools’ Chess Competition this weekend. Other regular gifted and talented competitions including Da Vinci Decathlon and Have Sum Fun Mathematics have been postponed until later in the year due to COVID.

Jim Miller

Magis Gifted and Talented Program Coordinator