Disaster+Blaster+Week+10

Week 11, November 7, 2013

Games: Eric supplied the games this week. He choose "All Aboard" in which a rope was laid out on the floor with the ends touching. All team members had to stand in the circle. Each time that was accomplished, the rope circle was then shrunk so that team members had to move closer. Then they begin to find solutions as the circle continued to shrink, including lifting team members and forming a train like circle and holding on and supporting each other. Eric also choose a game called "Scrap Tower". They divided into groups and used tape and recycled magazine pages to build the tallest tower. We discussed how each team distributed tasks, how they achieved stability and height in their structure, and how they worked together. This game was too competitive for my group. Some of the kids were more focused on winning than working together and analyzing team dynamics. It was still fun and allowed them an opportunity to build.

Team Business Meeting: We discussed our team shirt a bit more. We also got a first look at the boards that the kids will be working on over the next weeks as we prepare them for Expo. One board will be dedicated to simple machines and hurricanes, and one one board will be dedicated to the team and core values.

Project: We talked more about hurricanes and decided that more research was necessary to determine the people who help out before, during and after a natural disaster and how they work together. Each student is to bring in three facts about Hurricane Katrina and then we can extrapolate how these apply to other hurricanes, including Hurricane Sandy and the current typhoon in the Phillipines.

Game: We played a game called "Group Draw". Each team member has a different colored marker. They are to make one "squiggle" per turn. That squiggle may be as long as the member wants and may double back on itself, but it may not intersect another squiggle. This was harder for some people than others. We ended up starting over a couple of times as people got the hang of it. We passed it around the group a couple of times and then gave it a name, __Crazy LBT__. We discussed if it was easier to create the drawing or name the drawing. They decided it was harder to name the drawing, which I found ironic as they named it pretty quickly and without needing to vote on it! We will be matting the art and including it on one of our boards for Expo.

Build: We watched a video about pulleys and explored building pulleys with the Lego Simple Machines set.