The Marshmallow Challenge is a remarkably fun and instructive design exercise that encourages teams to experience simple but profound lessons in collaboration, innovation and creativity. The task is simple: in 18 minutes, teams must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 2o sticks of spaghetti, one metre of tape, one metre of string, and one marshmallow. The marshmallow needs to be on top.
Today we had high school science teacher, Suzie Feodoroff, visit our school and she set a fantastic problem solving activity for the students…The Marshmallow Challenge! As we love problem solving activities at Crossmaglen P.S. this was perfect for the students. Did you know that the students who traditionally do best with this challenge are either kindergarten students OR engineering/architecture students. It was great fun to stand back and watch all the students work together in their teams to try and create a free standing structure. The year 5 girls came first with a 40cm structure, year 1&2 students second with 22.5cm, and the year 6 group 3rd with 2cm as in the end they still produced a structure with a marshmallow on top. We slightly modified the resources by giving all the students 25 sticks of spaghetti and 20 minutes to complete the task.
Wow guys….what a great lesson. I’ll be borrowing that one Mrs Cavanagh. I love your New school shirts too.
That’s what we want to see and hear in the classroom. All that communication and problem solving. Awesome! What a fantastic bunch of students. Thank you for the pleasure of being able to visit. P.S. I now also want to take up the ukulele!
Thanks Ms Fed, what an amazing lesson! Love when the kids are given problem solving opportunities and they have to use social skills and creativity as part of their solution. Thanks for visiting school 🙂