Teacher Blog - Beanstalk Challenge

     Each Thursday our class has been participating in various challenges, sometimes in small groups or pairs. So far we have had a problems such as connecting nine dots in an array with only four lines, figuring out patterns of numbers, and ordering words based on alpha-numeric values.
     This past week we turned to an engineering challenge as each student had exactly 10 pipe cleaner and nothing else to try and create the tallest structure. Although there were great questions (and even attempts) to bunk the challenge by hanging their structures or securing them to table legs, the variety of "beanstalks" as we called them was great and had quite a few able to successfully make theirs stand even in the short 15 minutes they were given. Take a look at some of the students at work and with their "beanstalks."