Meriden girls have once again excelled at one of the school year’s most rigorous intellectual and creative challenges: Tournament of Minds. The school team topped the Regional Final for the third consecutive year before receiving honours at the State Final event.
Seven hardworking students represented Meriden in the State Final: Heidi Bartlett, Chantelle Ma, Alicia Wang, Vanessa Wu, Emily Yang, Talia Yin and Christina Zhou. They were tasked with developing a story that explored the consequences of a catastrophic event that would prevent people from seeing the colour red. Inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the girls interwove the story of this famous play into their explanation of red as symbolic of love, anger and danger.
Dr Phoebe Poon, Meriden’s Coordinator of Learning Link – Gifted and Talented, says the girls performed outstandingly in the challenge.
“Using a combination of rehearsed and unscripted material, each student demonstrated her ability to improvise and think creatively under time pressure,” Dr Poon said.
“The girls garnered praise from the judges for ingeniously embedding the fundamental principles of Language and Literature into their response. We are proud of the team’s strong results in the State Final and are also proud of the girls who represented Meriden so well in the Regional Final.”
At the Regional Final, Heidi, Chantelle, Alicia, Vanessa, Emily, Talia and Christina nabbed first place in the Language Literature Challenge for their masterful adaptation of Aladdin, which saw the fairy-tale hero take on a new persona as a gifted computer hacker. A seamless production, this video response gained a perfect score from the judges.
A second Meriden team, consisting of Kaitlyn Blair, Elaine Huang, Sienna Kim, Connie Liu, Jacinda Tjiantoro, Cordelia Xie and Audrey Zou, received Honours in the Social Sciences Challenge. Their film explored diverse views on the right of women to an education through mock interviews with famous thinkers including Socrates, Charles Darwin, Jane Goodall and Malala Yousafzai.
Over the course of the competition, 28 Meriden students from Years 7 to 10 competed. A revised, COVID-safe format was introduced, allowing participating teams to submit a film demonstrating their challenge responses, rather than the regular format of presenting to a panel of judges.
Congratulations to every student who represented the School in this competition.
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Meriden is an Anglican day school for girls from Pre-Kindergarten to Year 12. Meriden offers a high-quality and balanced education […]