Science

Tournament of Minds 2022
On Sunday 21 August, 2022, thirteen Year 7 and 8 students from Penola Catholic College Glenroy campus attended the Tournament of Minds competition. For the last three weeks, students worked together in teams to complete the Tournament of Minds STEM projects. The students involved were chosen to participate based on their Semester 1 results in English, Math and Science. We were lucky enough to be able to enter two teams.

Team 1

  • Lucas P 8B
  • Krystal T 8G
  • Ruby J 77B
  • Tej B 7I
  • Vuong L 7B
  • Alyzza L 8I

Team 2

  • Artemis R 8I
  • Maria L 8G
  • Amelie M 8A
  • Ryan C 8B
  • Jaede R 7H
  • Ivy L 7H
  • Melany C 7D

Tournament of Minds (TOM) is an international program designed to give participants the opportunity to participate in creative activities involving stimulating open-ended challenges, which demand experimentation and reward divergent thinking. TOM promotes learning and developing as an individual within a team structure.

Each group researched and presented a solution to the STEM challenge: Gold Rush, where they designed and built a rotating platform to display a 300g nugget of gold from different angles. The group theatrical performance was planned to the high standards of the TOM competition, including their research, scripting, props construction and contributions of all team members during the performance time of 10 minutes. Students were required to create all props, scripts, costumes etc. by themselves using only items from a set list. The resulting performance showed scientific accuracy, moments of humour and great team skills.

As teachers, we were very impressed by the dedication of the TOM students leading up to and including their performances on the day. Parents who attended were also deservedly proud of the great efforts their children had made over the last few weeks. A huge congratulations to all thirteen students for their wonderful ideas and commitment to this extension opportunity. The attached photos show both groups in action, presenting their entertaining and informative performances confidently.

This extension opportunity is part of our co-curricular program at Penola, and we look forward to increasing the range of participants next year. We are grateful for the support of Mrs. Brandon and Mrs. Tatam during this competition.

Dr Trapani and Mr. Katsahambas

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