Gifted and Talented

Students can compete in these public speaking competitions from 12-15 years old

Focused on building an interest in science and engineering in students, FIRST^® LEGO^® League is a hands-on competition designed to capture young students’ curiosity and direct it toward discovering how science and technology impact the world around them. The competition features a real-world challenge, to be explored through research, critical thinking and imagination. Guided by adult coaches and the Core Values, team members work with LEGO^® elements and motorized parts to build ideas and concepts and present them for judging.

Groups of 7 students from year 5-10 can participate. TOM offers teams of students the opportunity to solve authentic, open-ended challenges that foster creative, divergent thinking whilst developing collaborative enterprise, excellence and teamwork.

Challenges are set in the following disciplines... The Arts, Language Literature, Social Sciences and STEM.

Interschool competition with Debating SA. Students are able to develop their research, communication , social and thinking skills. The competition runs from May until September.

Year 8 students compete against other schools developing their engineering skills in designing and making a bridge under certain restraints.

Students from Foundation to Year 9 are invited to investigate scientifically an area of interest and present a product to enter the State competition.

Thinking about thinking. A secondary team discusses ethical dilemmas at an inter school competition.

Three teams compete against other schools on 10 different subject area ranging from Maths to creative producers. It is a great day of working collaboratively on some very challenging tasks.

Students from Reception to year 10 are provided with weekly training and compete against other schools in September.

Available to upper primary students. Students explore different engineering challenges using a hands on approach.

Upper primary students have the opportunity to plan, lead and organise different lunch time activities to foster communication and social skills.

A two day workshop for all upper Primary students learning how to mediate and to lead other students in resolving conflict in a win/win situation.

Secondary students train and compete on a state and international level using their understanding of dates and facts in history in a beat the buzzer style competition.

High order thinking students are invited to compete in this national competition.

Over 40 students attend this inspiring morning of hearing different authors talk about their writing experience.

FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge

Our team of seven Year 7-10 students worked hard over 16 weeks of lunchtime and after-school preparation to achieve awards in both the state and national competitions winning:

• Core Values Award in the State Competition – The team displayed excellence in demonstrating the FIRST Lego League's Core values of Discovery, Innovation, Impact, Inclusion, Teamwork, and Fun!
• National Trophy for Best Robot Design - The team flew to Melbourne to compete in the National Championships on Saturday 3 December, following their fantastic achievements at the State Finals.

Computational and Algorithmic Thinking Competition (CAT)

Emmaus Christian College had 23 students from both our South Plympton and Brooklyn Park Campuses who participated along with 17,532 students nation-wide.

We are extremely proud of all our students who were willing to be challenged. Congratulations to the four students who achieved a Distinction and the nine students who achieved a Credit.

CSIRO Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge

In 2022, Emmaus students from Year 5 to 7 participated in the National Competition:

• Two teams achieved a Distinction

• One team achieved a Credit

• Seven teams achieved a Merit

SASTA Oliphant Science Awards

Congratulations to:

• Caleb (Year 9) who achieved first prize with his investigation on Which metals dissolve the most when introduced to 2M hydrochloric acid?

• Hannah (Year 9) who was awarded second place with her inquiry on: How effective is bleach to remove certain stains?

• Maggie (Year 9) was awarded the prestigious "Wine Australia" prize which is given to the most outstanding entries, from either Posters or Scientific Inquiry, that highlight food chemistry for her detailed inquiry on What makes some tea more acidic than others?

• Ethan (Year 6) for winning an "Honourable Mention" for his poster on Natural Histories.

South Australian Computational Linguistics Olympiad (SACLO)

Five Emmaus teams from Secondary School, consisting of 23 students, competed at Prince Alfred College. The students were in teams of four and had two hours in which to decode using sparse clues, ancient and foreign languages including an Aboriginal dialect.

Think Challenge

Two Emmaus teams of Year 8 and 9 Students attended the academic Think Challenge competition Temple College at Paralowie in February and November. The students competed against other Christian colleges in the areas of: Mathematics, History, Art, Poetry, Religion, Science, English, Engineering Logic and reasoning and General Knowledge.

Our Emmaus teams won First place in: History and Politics, Engineering, Mathematics and Business Innovation. They came Second place in Science.

One of our Emmaus teams came First overall for the day and excelled in the team spirit of fitting 27 students inside an A4 piece of paper that was strategically cut to make a continuous paper strip.

Da Vinci Decathlon

Teams of eight students competed against 23 other schools from across Adelaide in the all-day Academic Competition in June. Congratulations to our students for their impressive results:

• Year 5/ 6 Team:

  • 3rd place in Engineering

• Year 7 Team achieved outstanding results:

  • 1st place in Code Breaking

  • 2nd place in Ideation

  • 2nd place in Creative Producers

  • 5th place in Cartography

• Year 9 Team:

  • 3rd place Cartography

  • 3rd place English

All three of our teams were publicly commended with their attitude and respectfulness.

Legacy Junior Public Speaking Competition

Ben and Bradley, (both Year 9) competed in the competition, preparing a five-minute speech about one of Legacy's values: Social Justice, Compassion, Personal Sacrifice, Voluntary Service and Mateship.

The second component of the competition was the impromptu speech where they had 15-minutes to prepare a two-minute speech on the topics, "What makes me happy" and "Making a Difference".

Both Year 9 boys spoke with confidence and had a strong presence about them.

Congratulations to Bradley Turland for progressing through to the State Finals and winning third place!

Rostrum Senior Public Speaking Competition

Congratulations to Jamie Sutton (Year 11) who reached the State Finals.

Debating SA Competition

We had over 60 students participating in this 2022 season in 10 teams from both campuses.

Many of our students won speaker of the night!

Two of our teams: Brooklyn Park Year 5/6 and our Senior Year 11 team reached the quarter finals.