Tournament of the Minds

This year junior school students were invited to join a team to respond to the challenge of Tournament of the Minds. Every year schools across Australia are invited to participate in their regions in response to an open-ended challenge. The students were required to work together to respond to a high-challenge scenario and create a script to address and solve the problem. The guidelines for the challenge were very strict and required students to respond to the challenge unassisted, so teamwork was a major focus. This year, having to create a presentation video and work together online added to the challenges but our students were able to collaborate to create a high quality and creative response.

I was really encouraged to see how well our team worked together, sacrificing their lunchtimes, after school time and even some weekend time to make sure the challenge requirements were met and the final video met the deadline submission date. I had a lot of fun facilitating this group and observing how well they worked together as a team to think outside of the box and respond with enthusiasm.

I also participated in judging the Gippsland region entries and was really encouraged to see how well students across the state have worked together this term to be creative thinkers and team players outside of their regular school hours.

Thank you and congratulations to our awesome 2021 team!

Jamie Katic 8B, Jake Gould 8D, Hannah Lupton 7G, Daniel Arndtheim 7G, Nicholas Jiang 7G and Boris Tosovic 7G

Some reflections from our students:

The topic that the group chose for Tournament of the Minds was ‘Journalists going on Strike.’ The experience of working together with other people from different year levels was beneficial because I made new friends and strengthened the relationships with the people I already knew. The group shared ideas and experiences in order to come up with the topic and video. We would constantly bounce ideas off each other and eventually created a fantastic Tournament of the Minds video presentation. It was challenging at times because of the covid restrictions, but we all decided as a group that we will overcome these obstacles and not give up. I personally learned that no matter what the circumstances are, if you believe in the group and work hard together you can accomplish anything. I would highly recommend this experience to anyone who would like to give it a go. – Daniel Arndtheim, 7G

Working on a Tournament of the Minds project in a group was an incredibly fun experience. It was quite a commitment to use up lunchtimes and after-school sessions for the project but it was worth it to work with other dedicated students. The most challenging aspect would have to be coming up with an idea that everyone in the group agreed with. It was amazing that we went from having no idea what topic we should do to having a video filmed in just about a week's time. I would definitely recommend that all students eligible to participate in this competition take part in it for all of the learning opportunities and fun you can have with other students. – Jamie Katic, 8B

I found it fun working with others because I got to see how other people thought and the different ideas they came up with. It was a little bit challenging at first, but after a couple of meetings we all agreed on an idea and all of us contributed in some way. I definitely think my acting skills improved, the performance was a little bit stressful but we all came through. If we had another chance to do it, I wouldn't change anything. – Boris Tosovic, 7G

Gemma Fisher

T.O.M. Team Facilitator