Working as a team so that you are successful can often be a challenge, lots of ideas and personalities to accommodate. Different learning and communication styles, it can be a real struggle and takes practice. A small team may be easier to manage but may lack variety of ideas, a large team can bring alot of options but it can be really hard to keep everyone on task. The children discussed first what skills they may need to employ, a kind approach, an open mind, be respectful to all ideas, you never know merging a few ideas together may produce the best outcome.
This weeks task: to work successfully with your team to create a tower of sticks. The rules: it must be free standing, no ties or string, for younger children only short sticks, for the older ones they could use long ones too. The tower had to be able to hold an egg for 10 seconds. They had planning time before they began and as you can see the children threw themselves into this. There was a nice feeling of gentle competitiveness, the collaboration was really visible. Remember this term groups have been set by the adults, this can often add pressure but the children have really embraced working with new people and were really proud of the results.
