On 28th of May, 16 Wyvern boys from Years 5 & 6 participated in an academic gala day at Knox Grammar, known as the ‘NSW da Vinci Decathlon’, in which a stunning 113 schools were competing. The Decathlon is a tournament run in the spirit of an Olympic Decathlon, including the following ten disciplines: Science, Creative Producers, Philosophy, English, Maths & Chess, Cartography, Engineering, Art & Poetry, General Knowledge and Code Breaking. The da Vinci Decathlon is an academic competition designed to challenge and stimulate the minds of school students.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519) was one of the world’s greatest thinkers and scholars. Da Vinci demonstrated an ability to perceive the interconnected nature of knowledge and embraced learning with a lifelong passion and determination to uncover the unknown. The Decathlon competition places a particular emphasis on higher order thinking skills, problem solving and creativity.

At 7.00am in the morning, the boys hopped on the bus for the journey to Knox. They were greeted by Knox senior students and were taken to the Great Hall where they joined almost a thousand other students in a rush to find their tables. A brief introduction led them to session 1, where the boys competed in Science, English and Philosophy. Morning tea lasted only a short time before session 2 began, including Engineering, Cartography, Art & Poetry, Maths & Chess and Creative Producers. The boys then had lunch before being called in for the last session. In this session the boys worked hard to complete Code Breaking and General Knowledge before a surprise performance by three vocalists from Knox and one of the cast from the musical ‘Les Miserables’.

The boys performed stunningly, the Year 5’s worked hard and had an outstanding result to come 3rd in Art & Poetry and Philosophy, while the Year 6’s performed amazingly, coming 3rd in Philosophy, 3rd in Science and 1st in Engineering. The Year 6 team also managed to come 3rd overall out of 113 schools. Everyone obtained a small da Vinci badge, adding even more to their collection from the day.

The Engineering task (Tornado Tower) asked the team to build a tower out of 30 paddle pop sticks, 6 straws, an A4 sheet of cardboard, a 20cm piece of string and 1m of tape which could hold 8 marbles. However, there werea  few limitations. The tower had to be at least 3 paddle pop sticks tall and they could not use over 1m of sticky tape.The team based their tower entirely on triangles, with a triangle shape base and top connected by 3 poles that were joined by a layer of triangles.

The boys performed superbly with integrity and everyone greatly enjoyed their experience.
Addison Eastway 6H