Tournament of Minds

Tournament of the Minds is a program for school children that offers opportunities for teams of students to work to solve problems in a number of disciplines. These include:

Language Literature, Mathematics Engineering and Social Sciences.

Teams are either junior or senior teams. Junior teams commonly consist of students in the last two years of primary school and senior teams usually consist of students from years 8-10. The program is currently available throughout Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. The program runs through the third school term commonly commencing on the 3rd week back from school.

The Tournament of Minds Process

Each team of 7 spends 6 weeks preparing a dramatic scenario that addresses the challenge specifications.

Teams compete against each other to present their challenge solutions in front of a panel of judges on Tournament Day. Tournament of the Minds is different from other school-based programs because students must complete their challenge without any outside assistance. They are required to prepare scripts, costumes, props and backdrops from recyclable materials and/or bought materials (but not things like shirts and shorts), and everything (except for things such as textas and paper) must add up within a strict budget of $50 for Language Literature and Social Sciences teams and $75 for Mathematics Engineering teams.

On Tournament Day teams are also required to complete a Spontaneous Challenge, where quick thinking and creativity are demanded of the team in the space of a few minutes. The Spontaneous Challenge is not conducted before an audience, but before a panel of judges.

Topics

The 2004 topics were

Language Literature - "Cut it out"

Social Sciences - "Veg out in Suburbia"

Mathematics Engineering - "De-Cipher De-code"

External links

• Tournament of the Minds — Official website