18 SEP 2024 Tournament of Minds

This year, Kolbe Catholic College entered a team into the Tournament of Minds (ToM) competition after an absence of several years. ToM is a problem-solving program for teams of four to seven students from Years 7 to 10. It is centred upon creative thinking and problem solving. There are four possible disciplines - Language Literature, Social Sciences, STEM and The Arts.

Commencing at the start of Term Three, a group of seven Year 8 students – Ansel, Brian, Carmelo, Gabe, Francis, Manveer and Xavier worked together as a team to answer a challenge as creatively as possible over 6 weeks. The team selected the STEM discipline and had to devise a method of mitigating or eliminating some form of plastic pollution from the environment. They had to design their device, build a working prototype and then present their solution as a 10-minute presentation on Tournament Day at the Regional Finals, which took place on Saturday 24 August at La Trobe University. The teams were also required to complete a sight-unseen Spontaneous Challenge on the day. The students competed against 5 other schools and were awarded First Place for the region, allowing them to progress to the State Finals.

The State Finals took place on Sunday 8 September. Once again, the students were required to complete two challenges – a Three-hour Challenge and a Spontaneous Challenge. In the Three-hour Challenge, the team was provided with the task of producing an elastic-banded, self-propelled Mars rover, using only the materials provided, and to explain its use in a creative roleplay. Whilst solving this challenge, the students also completed the Spontaneous Challenge of the day. The students performed well, but unfortunately were not able to progress to the International Finals.

This is what a couple of the students had to say about their experience of the program:

During Tournament of Minds, I enjoyed exploring different STEM related questions and using our abilities to solve them. Even though we had problems we managed to get through to the State Finals, we unfortunately got caught short and lost in the State competition, but we will do our best next year to try and try to make it to Internationals. – Ansel

The Tournament of Minds is a competition that has 4 different categories that students can participate in - STEM, The Arts, Language Literature and Social Sciences. As Kolbe’s one and only team we all chose STEM. The problem for 2024 was making an innovation to get rid of plastic waste. We were able to get to State level after placing first in our regional finals. – Xavier

It was an outstanding achievement from the students to reach the State Finals on their first attempt. They are ready to try again in 2025, aiming to go one step further. There is the opportunity for more students to take part in 2025 and rise to the challenge that ToM offers students and the amazing benchmark set by this year’s group.

Mr Anthony Schepis
Curriculum Leader (Innovation and Growth)