Team travels to Newcastle for Tournament of Minds

Seven Stage 3 students from Woy Woy Public School have represented the school in the Tournament of Minds.

Tyson Cridland, Lucia Keating, Gemma Montelbano, Dylan Morrison, Zak Graham, Noah Hunt and Vali Focas, travelled to Newcastle Grammar School on August 26, to take part in the tournament.

"We participated in the Tournament to present a spontaneous challenge and a long term challenge that we had been working on for six weeks," said Tyson Cridland.

"The Tournament of Minds is a challenge around the world for primary and secondary students who have been selected by their teachers to solve a challenge by acting their solution out," said Lucia Keating.

Tournament officials give participating teams four different challenge areas: STEM, social science, the arts and literature to guide their challenge.

"Our school's team chose social sciences for their long term challenge, which was called, 'Don't fence me in'," said Gemma Montelbano.

"The challenge was: There are many examples of walls or fences being built around the world for different purposes, the Great Wall of China, the Mexican border and more.

"Some fences have been built to keep people out, and others in.

"While exploring, your team has found the remains of a fence."

The team was given the task of identifying why the fence was built and by whom.

Dylan Morrison said: "We needed to work out whether or not the fence had achieved its purpose, and both the unintended and intended consequences of the fence being built.

"We also had a spontaneous challenge that we got given on the day," said Zak Graham.

"The solution we came up with was that a couple of the world leaders got together to discuss an idea about an eco-dome to see if human beings could survive without technology despite the environmental failure outside.

"They built the dome and made it into a TV show to get money.

"While the people in the dome lived their lives, the outside world died out as a matter of pollution and the ozone layer being destroyed," said Noah Hunt.

"But the people in the dome lived on until they later found out they were inside a dome.

"Then somebody accidentally opened the door to the outside world.

"Our solution was so good that our team came second out of about 50 schools," Vali Focas said.

SOURCE:

Newsletter, 31 Aug 2018

Ona Buckley, Woy Woy Public School