Gifted Awareness Week

It is Gifted Awareness Week (GAW) this week. GAW was designed by the Australian Association of Gifted and Talented in 2015 to create awareness in the community of our Gifted and Talented students and to celebrate them.

This week at school some of our Gifted and Talented students took part in activities such as the Year 7 and 9 Da Vinci Decathlon Competitions at Saint Peter’s Girls’ School. Some Year 10 Gifted and Talented students also took part in the Senior Ethics Olympiad. Talented Year 8 students participated in a ‘Novel to Film’ English extension day with Mrs Thurston this week.

I hope that GAW has provided some perfect opportunities to celebrate the value of Gifted members of our community and the contributions that they can make to our school and to society.

On Wednesday and Thursday, two energetic teams of Year 7 and 9 students travelled to St Peter’s Girls’ College to participate in the annual Da Vinci Decathlon. In this competition school teams from the same year level across South Australia compete in team challenges. The challenges are related to various disciplines and require considerable thinking and problem solving skills as well as creative ability and collaboration. Our teams competed well while having a lot of fun at the same time.

The Year 9 team were awarded third place in the competition after competing with 20 other schools! An outstanding achievement! All students displayed true team spirit on the day. They are to be congratulated on their wonderful efforts.

Pictured below: Year 7 Da Vinci Team: (L-R) Chiara Paris, Lola Whiteman, Domenic Eckermann, Oliver Giordano, Joe Chahwan, Mia Wei, Dwij Joshi, Allegra Greene

Bronze Medal winning Year 9 Da Vinci Team: (L-R) Ella Verrilli, Jeevan Abraham, Gigi Osborn, Agamnoor Kamboj, Suenbir Bajwa, Hiral Kalra, Shudhit Mittal, Leila Randell

On Wednesday, 2 teams of Year 10 students competed in the Senior Ethics Olympiad online. This competition encourages respectful dialogue about ethical issues. Students have to prepare ethical cases and present their ideas on the ethical issues therein. There were 25 teams in the competition. I am pleased to announce that one of our teams gained second place in the competition and received achieved silver medals! Our other team came seventh in the competition. Congratulations to our winners for doing so well in a competitive but very worthwhile competition.

Kathryn Wills
Coordinator of Challenge Program (Gifted and Talented)

Pictured below: Senior Ethics Olympiad team (L-R) Oliver Gallacher, Meharpeet Bains, Liam Holland, Amelia Graves

Silver Medal winning Senior Ethics Olympiad team (L-R) Ava Heinicke, Mackenzie Holder, Gaby Elias, Siena Eliseo, Juliet Mazur