Tournament of Minds – Preparation

This year, the College has 28 students currently preparing for the Tournament of Minds  which will be held on 8 September. This is our largest group of students to be involved in this creative problem-solving event. Students are required to solve demanding, open-ended challenges from one of the following disciplines: The Arts, STEM, Language Literature and Social Sciences. Our group is working very well, navigating the challenges of critical and creative thinking in a collaborative setting. 

Below are some reflections about their journey so far and accompanying photos.

Ms Sarah Thompson, Leader of Innovative and Global Connections

Chelsea and Aria (Year 8)

Tournament of Minds is a competition between schools in which teams of seven students from years 7-10 work together to solve a challenge from one of four areas: STEM, Language and Literature, Social Sciences, and the Arts. 

Teams have to solve a challenge and present their solution by writing a script for a play and perform it in front of judges. We have to create all of the props and source most of the resources ourselves without the help of teachers or parents, making it an awesome way to gain teamwork skills and make new friends in your year or others!

This year, Domremy has four teams with students from each year group competing: Two Language and Literature teams and two Social Science teams. Our team is doing language and literature, and our challenge says that two publishers are about to release a biography about a character, but the character comes back from the dead and notices a critical flaw in the book. We have to pick from a list of fictional characters for the book to be about, and we chose Sadako from “Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes” by Eleanor Coerr.

Some problems we have faced so far were getting roles in the team organised and discussing what each of our contributions had to be for us to be able to complete the challenge in time, but now we are working well together and are on track to complete our play and be ready to perform by the competition date in early September.

So, if Tournament of Minds sounds like something you’d be interested to participate in, look out for Ms Thompson’s email and sign up next year!

Sienna and Anita (Year 7)

As we have embarked on this new experience so far we have learnt how to compromise, make new friends and accept any challenge that comes our way. Through Tournament of Minds we are building a new sense of resilience, courage and friendship. As a team we have worked together to solve the TOM challenges and chosen to undertake this challenge as a whole. In our weekly team meetings we have discussed new ideas and put those concepts into practice. Throughout the course of this experience we have already grown as people and become closer together.