Education experts support brain-bending challenges
23 June 2011
Meeting of minds ... Aurora O'Neil with Beenleigh State School Tournament of Minds teammates Tori Groves-Little, Chloe Squires and Alisha McKee.
Education experts say extra-curricular activities that encourage innovative thinking and teamwork are critical to a child's development.
According to Judith Hewton, state secretary and past president of the Queensland Association for Gifted and Talented Children, students who practice logical thinking in combination with innovative idea generation will 'live better'.
'Students can apply their logical and sequential skills along with random and abstract thinking to live better and identify and solve life problems successfully,' said Ms Hewton.
Eleven-year-old Aurora O'Neil from Beenleigh State School will be applying these skills when she competes against the best junior thinkers in the country in the annual Tournament of the Minds competition.
The competition sees the brightest primary and secondary age students battle it out in brain-bending challenges across disciplines such as Applied Technology, Language Literature, Maths Engineering and Social Sciences.
Aurora, a state finalist last year and avid netballer, has flagged spontaneous thinking as the area she would most like to improve on for this year's mind challenge.
'There are seven people in our team and we are practising solving problems on the spot and under pressure,' said Aurora.
'We have a team leader who manages our group's thinking and from there we piggy-back off each others' ideas - the more we practice the better we get at generating creative solutions.
'Since participating in Tournament of Minds, I've noticed I have become a better team player at netball and have more confidence to share my ideas.'
Register online at the Tournament of Minds competition website.
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