SOME of our brightest young minds gathered at Singleton High School (SHS) last Wednesday to compete in the Meeting of the Minds Challenge Day.
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The event marked the end of this year’s Singleton Enrichment Project, a-10-week collaboration between local public primary schools and the high school aimed at promoting the education of gifted and talented students (GATS).
Each week the selected Year five and six students were asked to tackle a maths question in small groups at their respective schools.
But, on the day of the challenge, they had to solve problems from number of different topic areas from Engineering and English to General Knowledge.
SHS GATS co-ordinator Leanne Mullen said the day was like a trivia night with an academic focus.
“We have a prize for the maths part of the project, plus prizes for the day and then we add all the scores together for an overall winner,” she said.
“The day itself is organised and managed by Year 10 students who were a part of the high school’s enrichment class.
“This is a selective program offered to gifted and talented students in their first two years of high school and helps them develop good learning relationships.
“It is basically a class where it is ‘OK to be smart’.
“The students do everything from mentoring the participating teams to marking their work and they are great role models for the kids, who may themselves end up being in the enrichment program.”
Year 10 student Emma Watson said the day was also about making friends.
“We set up, devise the tasks, manage the day and do all the marking,” she told The Argus.
“When we tried out for the enrichment class there was nothing like this – it is a great idea.”
This is the second time the event has been staged and the winners on the day were Mount Pleasant Public School with King Street coming in second and third place went to Singleton Public School.
As for the 10-week maths challenge, the Singleton Heights teams did well taking out first and second place and the consistent Mount Pleasant managed third.