Tournament Of Minds Results | Somerville House

On Sunday 27 August, Somerville House Junior School students from Years 4 to 6 competed in the Gold Coast Regional Tournament of the Minds held at The Southport School (TSS). The Somerville House teams (made up of 7 students each) were required to solve demanding, open-ended challenges from either The Arts, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), Language Literature or Social Sciences, and performed exceptionally.

Our student teams prepared for six weeks without assistance from teachers or parents in order to present their best possible challenge solution in ten minutes to the panel of judges on Sunday. Teams then also participated in unseen ‘Spontaneous Challenges’ on Tournament Day to showcase their ability to share ideas quickly, think creatively and work as well as a team to produce the following results:

Year 6 Language Literature - 2nd place & Honours Award.
Year 5 Social Science - 2nd place & Honours Award.
Year 4 STEM - 1st place.

Tournament Honours are awarded to teams distinguishing themselves. Generally, these are teams that score within the top 15% in their Discipline and Division. Congratulations to our students' exceptional achievement.

As first place winners, the Somerville House Year 4 'Somer Frogs' STEM team, along with approximately 20 of the best teams from schools in Brisbane, Proserpine, Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast will attend the Queensland Branch Finals at The Southport School (TSS) on Sunday 10 September to compete for a place at the National Finals. These Queensland finals will see our Year 4 minds solve a Three-Hour Challenge on the morning of tournament day in order to present their solution in the afternoon to a panel of professional judges chosen from all areas of education, the arts and industry.

The STEM discipline was newly introduced in 2018 and is presented by Tournament of Minds (TOM) as 'a combination of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics principles that challenge students to deepen their conceptual understanding and use their creative and critical thinking skills to solve the challenges within an authentic context.'

With the ever-increasing emphasis on the development of females considering STEM based career pathways, Somerville House is exceptionally proud of our Junior School students excelling within this discipline at Tournament of Minds.

Find out more about Tournament of Minds (TOM) here or contact Somerville House Learning Development Teacher - Mr Damian Mitchell here for more information.