Well, part of my [school] resolution this year is to get blogging, so here I am!
I love having my students take part in the Marshmallow Challenge twice a year: once at the beginning of the year in August and a second time in January. The second time around, I like to see how students respond to the challenge and what they might have learned from their mistakes last time. We talked about which base would be more stable, a triangular base or a quadrilateral base. (It's interesting to see which two structures were still standing after coming back from specials.)
Although the students participate in the Marshmallow Challenge to build the tallest freestanding structure, I have students discuss the process of collaboration and teamwork more so than their product. After 18 minutes of designing, building, redesigning, and rebuilding, students took a seat and we began the discussion of how we could collaborate better in Room 208.
Here are some of the bullet points we took away from our activity:
- communicate [listen to EVERYONE'S ideas]
- agree w/ your teammates BEFORE you do something
- it's okay to follow someone else's plan EVEN IF it's not your first choice
- work TOGETHER
- watch your BODY language
- let people TRY things out
We have learned so much about collaboration throughout the first half of our year, but we have resolved as a whole class to get better at it!
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