da Vinci Decathlon update

The decathlon was an exciting two days for students from Years 7-11 on the Senior Campus. The atmosphere was electric and spirits were high despite the early morning and cool autumn weather. Teams of eight students set out for Knox Grammar in Wahroonga to match wits against as many as 150 teams from other Sydney schools. The students were greeted by bagpipes and some dance moves from the MC before a draining but rewarding day of high-challenge academic activities.

I enjoyed the atmosphere of competitiveness and the cool surprises in the day like the entertainment by the Knox students.
Annabelle Wong
Year 7

The theme of the event was ‘light’. Each event tried to incorporate the theme, exploring ideas of light in literature, the sciences and throughout history. 

While doing the English paper in this event I learnt about the continuous theme of light throughout literature from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to modern literature with book like All the light we cannot see.
Jessica Caristo
Year 8

At the da Vinci Decathlon I learnt how to deal with harder, more challenging problems outside of my normal classes, specifically the science questions that challenged my ethical thinking skills by requiring us to provide solutions and reasoning.
Eleanor Koh
Year 8

The Decathlon celebrates teamwork, the challenging tasks and tight deadlines require students to rely on each other. Feedback from the attendees shows that this message of teamwork has really sunk in.

I also really enjoyed the feeling of positivity and teamwork as we worked on the tasks together – usually, I feel like when we are at school and doing tasks like that (especially assessment tasks) we are really competitive but at da Vinci we were all working together and communicating really effectively.
Hannah Chan
Year 10

I learnt that everyone has different skills and it is important to work as a team to do the best you can.
Annelies Notelaers
Year 11

We congratulate all teams who participated in the Decathlon. Of note are our Year 7 team who placed third for codebreaking. The Year 9 team placed sixth in creative producers, eighth in ideation and 15th in Maths. Our Year 10 team placed 11th in cartography, 11th in science and 12th in engineering. The year 11s placed eighth in ideation, 10th in English and 16th in cartography. 

Involvement in the da Vinci decathlon requires students in Years 8-11 to submit an application in Term 4. 

Matthew Mountford
Dean of Gifted Education