Aspire
Things are starting to heat up in the Aspire program for 2024 with many of our students across Years 5-12 training for and competing in a range of academic competitions. These students are diligent, kind, funny, and smart and it is such a privilege to get to work with them!
da Vinci Decathlon – Week 6, Term 1
Last week, 48 academically gifted students from Years 5-10 attended the annual da Vinci Decathlon Gala Day at the University of Western Australia. The competition asks teams of eight students to compete in 10 different disciplines over a huge day in UWA’s Winthrop Hall. After weeks of training, our teams not only had a fun and rewarding day, they also came away with several very impressive accolades!
Year 5: 1st place in Legacy (General Knowledge), 3rd place in Art and Poetry, 3rd place in Ideation
Year 6: 1st place in Ideation, 3rd place in Art and Poetry, 3rd place in Engineering
Year 7: 2nd place in Art and Poetry, 2nd place in Cartography
Year 8: 3rd place in Cartography
Year 9: 1st place in Art and Poetry, 2nd place in Codebreaking
Year 10: 1st place in Art and Poetry, 2rd place in Engineering
Congratulations to all of the students who participated in the competition in 2024!
Western Australian Schools Debating Competition
Our Year 10 Lake Joondalup Baptist College debate team had their first debate against Shenton College this week. The students managed to successfully convince the adjudicator that exclusionary discipline is not necessarily the best approach in education, with a focus on the benefits of meeting students’ social, emotional, and physical needs to curb issues before they start to arise. It was wonderful to see these students back at it again for the third year in a row and we are so proud of them for winning their first debate of the season!
It was also so beautiful to see that Chelsea and Layla, two of the team’s Year 12 mentors who graduated in 2023, came all the way out to Shenton College to support the team!
Next week, the team is up against Scotch College, arguing in a debate about the powers of local government.
We wish the students all the best in their preparations!
Junior and Senior Ethics Olympiads
In the next few weeks, we’ll start training for the Year 5-6 and 10-12 Ethics Olympiads. This competition challenges students to consider the ethics of a range of thought-provoking situations by applying complex theories such as deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics. Lake Joondalup Baptist College has a record of doing exceptionally well in Ethics Olympiads, scoring the rank of third place internationally in the senior division in 2023, showing that the students at LJBC are thoughtful and ethical young people. We are so excited to get to work with a new group of ethically-minded students!