Alstonville Public School

Effort Earns Success

Telephone02 6628 0775

Emailalstonvill-p.school@det.nsw.edu.au

Tournament of the Minds

Tournament of Minds (TOM) is a program for all primary and secondary students providing the opportunity to solve authentic, open-ended challenges that foster creative, divergent thinking whilst developing collaborative enterprise, excellence and teamwork.

Challenges are set in the following disciplines: The Arts, Language Literature, Social Sciences and STEM. Each team picks a discipline then has 6 weeks to solve a long-term challenge. No help from adults is allowed and all costumes and props have to be made by the teams from a list of recycled items. Usually, solutions are presented in front of an audience and panel of judges but due to the lock down, we recorded our response on zoom and sent the video off to be judged.

This year we entered teams in STEM, Social Sciences and Language Literature. Teams are made up of up to seven students, with a mix of Year 5 and Year 6 students in each team. Our results at the regional final were amazing! We won STEM, won Social Sciences and were awarded honours in Language Literature. Congratulations to our teams.

This Sunday, our two winning teams will compete in the State Finals. Competing again via zoom, each team will be given a spontaneous challenge and a 15 minute time limit to solve it. Judges will be watching and listening as we work together to come up with a solution to the challenge. Wish us luck!​

Mr Dave Hutchins