Gifted Education Program News

2021 Qld State da Vinci Decathlon             

One of the most highly anticipated events on the Gifted Education calendar is the da Vinci Decathlon. Spaces fill very quickly and this year we were fortunate to register six teams. Anntoinette Restell and I accompanied the Year 5 and Year 6 teams on Tuesday 1st June, the Year 7 and Year 8 teams on Wednesday 2nd June and the Year 9 and Year 10 teams on Thursday 3rd June to St Joseph’s Nudgee College, Boondall. 

Being a decathlon, there are ten disciplines in which students are challenged covering Art & Poetry, Cartography, Code-Breaking, Creative Producers (a 1-minute drama performance with 8 minutes preparation), Engineering, English, Ideation (creative problem-solving), Legacy (inventors and inventions from our history and the recent past), Mathematics & Chess and Science. Our students performed very well and received the following awards:

Year 5: 3rd Place – Legacy; 3rd Place – Code Breaking

Cormac DEADY, Charlie KELLY, Kayden KYOUNG, Christian MANNING, Connor O’ROURKE, Thomas SHAXSON, Oliver VE, Henry WALKER

Year 6: 3rd Place – Engineering

Julian CASSAR, Lachlan CHANDLER, Ben FLANAGAN, Archie LANGLER, Julian LEWIS, Jack LIDDELL, Darcy MAHONEY, Matthew TERWIN

Year 7: 1st Place – Science

Hugh AMBROSE, Luke GARVEY, Alessander JAVIER, Leo PIGOTT, Jack PURCELL, Matthew STOWER, Fletcher WESSLING

Year 8: Sebastian GARDINER, Lachlan HARNEY, Ben HARTFIEL, Ben MEAD, Elliot SCHANZL, Lachlan VINK, Andrew WOODWARD

Year 9: 2nd Place – Code Breaking; 2nd Place – Engineering; 3rd Place – Creative Producers

Alex APELT, Max BATHERSBY, Oliver BETTS, Liam BOURKE, Harrison DYER, Harry LEE, Remy VERSACE, Tristan WOODS

Year 10: 3rd Place – Cartography; 3rd Place – Ideation 

Angus BOSSE, George DALY, Daniel FELTRIN, Oliver LEE, Robbie POWER, Louis REBULA, 

Archie RYAN, Rhys TAYLOR

The competition is one of high energy, teamwork, challenge, frustration and excitement. The challenges were difficult, in some cases, extremely difficult, and all participating students agreed that they had been stretched intellectually by the end of the day. Congratulations to all of our students on their commitment to the preparation sessions, their focussed participation on the day and their support of each other. My sincere thanks to Mrs Restell for her support of this program and for taking the time away from her classes to accompany our teams.