What a year it has been so far! There are so many amazing opportunities available to our students at Concordia. Here is just a small sample of the wide variety of experiences that have been offered.

da Vinci Decathlon

The da Vinci Decathlon is an academic competition designed to stimulate the minds of students across a variety of disciplines. Named after one of the world’s greatest thinkers and scholars, the competition has an emphasis on higher-order thinking skills, problem-solving skills, teamwork and creativity. This competition is perhaps one of the most rigorous academic competitions for young people in Australia.

We had two teams of eight students (Year 7 and Year 9) organise themselves to complete papers in the following categories: Codebreaking, English, Mathematics, Science, Cartography, Engineering, Art & Poetry, Legacy (a type of general knowledge focusing on Leonardo da Vinci and the theme of the day, which this year was Utopia), Ideation, and Creative Producers. On both days of competition there were over 20 schools represented. To place in the top six of any discipline is a notable achievement. Our students worked beautifully together and should be proud of their overall achievement.

Results

Year 9 team: 

• 1st place Art and Poetry
• 1st place Creative Producers
• 3rd place Ideation.

This team also placed highly in Science, Code Breaking and Cartography.

Year 7 team: 

• 4th place in Cartography
• High placings in Art and Poetry, Mathematics, and Creative Producers.

Special congratulations to our Year 9 team members who placed in the top three in three of the ten disciplines. They placed fifth in the state overall.

CARE@CC (Community of Advocates for Respect and Empathy)

We recently welcomed Associate Professor Claire Baldwin from Flinders University to speak to our lunchtime CARE@CC group. Claire is a researcher-teacher-clinician, with expertise in physiotherapy and the physical recovery of people with acute medical or surgical conditions. She is currently the Course Coordinator in the Masters of Physiotherapy at Flinders. Claire’s words of wisdom clearly resonated with the group and she was incredibly encouraging of students on their individual journeys. We are so grateful to the medical professionals who support this enrichment opportunity.

Emma Rieger
Enrichment and Extended Learning