The following post has been imported from my original blog. Please excuse any references to Mrs. Patton’s Patch.
While it was surely a busy week, the first week of school was definitely a good one! We started all of the high level activities I told you about a few weeks ago in this post, as well as some great team building things as well.
My students loved doing the cup stacking challenge again! Only this time, I added a twist…
Last year we simply had the challenge of building the tallest tower with the number of cups that I gave them (56 this year). After seeing them build this year, I could tell from the conversations my students were having that we could take it a step further. On the second day, I gave them the challenge of creating the most stable tower using all of the cups I gave them. We tested it using a white board as a platform and stacking books on top of it. They had so much fun with this! I think the record was 31 books!
This activity will be great to refer back to when I talk about the Design Process and when we talk about different topics in science.
Another activity that was great for team building was our Eggbert Poster. We used the book Eggbert throughout the week to talk about how he was like us, to introduce thinking hats and then as the shape of our mystery puzzle. (If you don’t have the book Eggbert, Elmer is a great one, too!)
To prepare for this activity, I drew a large egg on a piece of poster board and divided it into puzzle pieces. I took a picture of the puzzle to refer to if I needed to give them help, and wrote all of their names the correct direction so we knew which way was up (very important step).
I handed my students a puzzle piece and let them decorate it however they wanted without telling them what is was. It was neat to watch how they worked together to figure it out.
Here is the only picture I managed to take of the activity:
We are going to keep this puzzle on the butcher paper on our wall this year to to remind us how we are like Eggbert and to remember the team work it took to put together.
I hope everyone else had or will have a great start to their school year!
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3 Responses
Such a cool way to link Science and teamwork. Thank you for sharing.
I really like how you extended the building with the cups. I'm thinking of getting a set of cups and just leave it out to see what they do with them. From there, we can move into stable structures. Thanks for the idea!
I must say that your students were able to create a tough tower! Thanks for challenging your students' intelligence. Allowing them to work as a team would help them feel more at ease with each other.