By Kyra Gillespie
Two teams from St Paul’s Anglican Grammar School recently competed at the Tournament of Minds (TOM) State Final competition with the Language and Literature team qualifying to compete at the Australasian and Pacific Finals in Darwin next month, 13 October.
In a highly challenging competition, the Language and Literature team placed first in their division, whilst the STEM team received an honourable mention in their division.
TOM, now an international event, is a problem solving program for Primary and Secondary students that develops diverse skills through open-ended challenges across STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), Language Literature, Social Sciences and The Arts disciplines.
TOM actively encourages teamwork as teams participate in a six week ‘Long Term Challenge’ to produce a creative and original presentation for a solution to a problem that is unique to their challenge field.
Each presentation is required to be presented in under ten minutes to a panel of judges and follow complex challenge criteria.
Teams also complete a short ‘Spontaneous Challenge’ on Tournament Day that requires the group to work together and think creatively and quickly on the spot.
Earlier this year both the St Paul’s Language Literature and STEM teams placed first in Primary at the Gippsland Region Tournament of Minds (TOM) competition to qualify for the state finals which was held at La Trobe University, Bundoora on Sunday 9 September.
The St Paul’s Language Literature TOM team are now seeking sponsors to support them in the Australasian Pacific Finals and if you, or any business you know, would like to assist please contact the Junior School office on 03 5622 6131 for more information.
