“That was the goal really,” said seventh-grade teacher Carmen Skiba. “It’s to teach them how to work together and how to use different communication styles. It’s just building teamwork and giving everyone a chance to get to know each other a little more.”
Students in Skiba’s and Shelly Siekman’s math classes took part in the challenge. First, students divided into teams. Some chose to work with just one or two partners, while other teams were larger groups.
The challenge consisted of four stages. The first 2-minutes teams could talk and plan their construction. The next 4-minute session took away all verbal communication and students relied mainly on writing messages to communicate. The second 4-minutes in the challenge allowed verbal communication, but participants could only use one hand. The final 5-minute round restored the ability to use both hands and all forms of communication.
Teams caught not following the rules during the time periods were given a penalty - a deduction of 3 inch per penalty from the final height of their tower.
Kayleigh Brown said it was hard not to use both hands to grab her tower as it started to tip over. “I just wanted to grab it,” she said.
Her partner Taylor Buehler said trying to rip tape was difficult when they could only use one hand, but she and Brown figured out a way to work together to rip off small pieces.
Emma Stevens and Zaydee Brautigam narrowly finished in second place in Mrs. Skiba’s class. “It was really fun. Not talking was kind of easy, but only using one hand was harder,” said Stevens.
Ryleigh Cromer and Emmalynnn Schiebout ended up with the winning tower in their class standing 50-inches. They agreed using only one hand was the biggest challenge. “We ripped our paper and it was easy to do with both hands, but harder with only one,” said Cromer.
Teams had to complete a follow-up assessment reflecting on how they could have improved their project and working together.