Tournament of Minds 2024
Over the past two terms, 28 students from Years 7-10 have met each week to prepare for the NSW Tournament of Minds. After many weeks of preparation four teams were selected to represent Domremy College at the Regional Competition.
Six weeks out from the Tournament, each team was given a challenge to solve. Two teams chose the Language Literature Challenge and two chose the Human Sciences Challenge. The task was to solve their respective challenge and present the team’s response as a 10 minute play, which students had to devise, script and rehearse without any assistance from others. Each team was required to create their own costumes and props, based upon a very small budget and only with materials from a very short given list. One Language Literature team chose to base their play around the children’s historical novel, “Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes”, while the other made links to Oliver Twist. Both teams demonstrated their understanding of their chosen literary genres and the development of character while displaying their creativity and insightful thinking.
Additionally, each team needed to prepare for a Spontaneous Challenge which is not revealed until the Tournament Day and must be solved within just a few minutes. This year’s Spontaneous Challenge was based around an image of a navy blue sign. One of our teams made conceptual links to the Australian Navy and the use of blue hues to represent water and danger. Creative thinking was really on display!
We are very proud of every student who took part this year. Each of them developed skills in collaboration, problem solving, critical thinking and they developed self-confidence in communicating and performing. It was wonderful to see the personal and academic growth which took place throughout the preparation period and as a result of participation in the Tournament.
Reflection by Sienna – Year 7
Since embarking on this challenge, my teammates and I have learnt how to persevere through any complicated situation that comes our way. As a team we had to come up with solutions to the topic we had chosen to do. Working as a team meant that we all had different ideas to put forward and we had to collaborate with one another. This taught us to be patient and to see other perspectives and ideas.
The task we chose to do was Social Sciences, which asked us to consider a scenario based upon the 7 continents merging together like it was millions of years ago. As a team we came up with the idea to have seven specialists to explain this mysterious event and made a model to help explain our creative story. We included costumes that represented each continent, and as a result we had an amazing performance.
As we all took part in this experience we acquired the skill of being able to think outside the box, which enabled us to expand our knowledge of the world. My teammates and I are truly grateful to be a part of this exciting experience, as it has given us the opportunity to make new friendships and take on anything that comes our way.
Ms Sarah Thompson, Leader of Innovative and Global Connections
