New England students, including two teams from The Armidale School have qualified for the State Final of the da Vinci Decathlon in Sydney later this year, having won their divisions at the regional academic competition held at TAS last week.
In what were close results, the TAS Year 5 and Year 10 teams applied teamwork, flexibility and skills across the 10 challenges – Engineering, Mathematics, Code Breaking, Art and Poetry, Science, English, Ideation, Creative Producers, Cartography and Legacy (significant people, inventions and events) – each of which included the overarching theme of sustainability.
“One of the hardest questions we had was, ‘how could we make a melted ice-cream truck on a beach, be good for the environment’? We explained how it could be used as a shelter and habitat for creatures that live on sand and in the water,” said Misaki Wright, a member of the Year 5 team.
Beyond the questions, where the challenges of another kind.
“We had pre-organised which team members would do what questions based on their strengths and skills. But we also learnt that working as a team has its challenges, but if you apply a positive attitude to teamwork and are prepared to be flexible you can have success. If we just did it individually we wouldn’t have done as well,” she said.
For the TAS Year 10 team, strength across the various subject areas propelled them into the top position, despite another school finishing first in more challenges.
“We were very unsure of what the outcome would be given another school won four of the disciplines, and TAS won three. Neither of us were listed for third or second, so it came down to the final announcement,” said team member Peter Thompson.
He said all disciplines involved sustainability to some degree, such as ideation which focused on real world problems and applicable solutions. Engineering featured a construction project involving collection of waste from the oceans.
“With da Vinci, I enjoy the challenging problems, particularly disciplines such as code breaking which otherwise you typically don’t experience otherwise. It’s great working alongside friends, and making new ones from other schools,” said Peter, who has attended the State Final in the past and is looking forward to experiencing academic challenges and exploring more of Sydney.
Event organiser Donella Tutt said the competition never fails to impress.
“Apart from the ingenuity that students apply to answering the questions, is their approach to how they organise their teams and manage their time, which are important skills as well,” she said.
Also eligible to attend the State Finals after winning their divisions are Armidale City Public (Year 6), Armidale Secondary College (Year 7 & 8) and Holy Trinity School Inverell (Year 9). Around 400 students from 16 schools from Armidale, Inverell, Coonabarabran, Gunnedah, Narrabri, Tamworth and Walcha attended this year’s Decathlon.