Young students in St. Joseph School District Gifted and Talented program (GATE) took first place in the skit competition and third place in the writing competition at the State Future Problem Solving Team Competition, hosted by Battle High School in Columbia.
Fourth graders Josh Donaldson, Sophia Nguyen, and Hailey Boss, and third grader, Allison Gentry were the award-winning writing team, competing against fourth – sixth graders across Missouri. They were the youngest students involved in the competition.
The writing competition is based on a scenario set about 30 years in the future, so the students must collaborate and be very creative with their responses. In two hours, the SJSD Team took the scenario on enhancing human potential, analyzed it from 16 different perspectives, determined the greatest underlying problem, proposed and analyzed possible solutions, selected the best solution and developed and wrote up an action plan.
The skit competition team consisted of Donaldson, Nguyen, Boss and Gentry, as well as third grader Sylvia Nguyen. In two and a half hours, they planned, wrote, made costumes and practiced a skit that they then performed on stage. These students were two to four years younger than many of the other competitors in their division and they were the only group to perform their skit without the use of notes. The GATE Team sang and danced to songs they wrote to existing tunes.
Future Problem Solving is a very rigorous yet creative competition designed by E. Paul Torrance of the Torrance Center for Creativity. In Future Problem Solving, teams and individuals use their knowledge and skills to find solutions for problems after looking carefully at all their options. They learn to base their efforts on what is known and not what is assumed. The also learn to use research and how to support their arguments. The expertise they gain from this competition will help them solve problems their entire lifetime.
“The GATE Team should be proud of this outstanding achievement, receiving a first and a third on their very first attempt at the Future Problem Solving skit and writing competition,” said Deb Ballin, the team’s coach and GATE teacher. “Students that successfully complete this process learn so much more than content – they learn to think.”