Roald Dahl Day

To celebrate Roald Dahl's birthday, our class partnered with Mrs. Fullhart's 5th grade ASPIRE to work on a SCAMPER project. Their task was to take one of Wonka's candies to SCAMPER. Pairs were to use more than SCAMPER.

Substitute

Combine

Adapt

Maximize/minimize

Put to another use

Eliminate

Reverse

Cup Tower Challenge

To illustrate the meaning of Grit, the scholars were given the challenge of building a cup tower. The tricky part: they could not touch the cups with their hands, they had to pick the cups up using string tied to a rubberband. In the beginning, the groups experienced many obstacles but quickly learned to communicate and to work as one unit! One group even reached 20 cups!

Shelter Design Challenge

We finally completed our Shelter Design Challenge! During this challenge, the class learned about: foundations/bases, frames, area, sturdiness, teamwork and successful failures. I allowed for much discovery and taught mini lessons along the way based upon the previous day's observations. In the end, we did have two groups that reached a point of frustration. This frustration came after several improvements and chats with the teacher. We all agreed that these groups experienced successful failures in that they learnd what worked and how they could apply some suggestions to attain their goals. 

*I did make one modification to the initial challenge: the shelters did not have to be enclosed. The reason for this modification was the shelters continued to collapse under the weight of the outer paper.