Marshmallow Team-Building Activity
On Day 4 we did another teamwork activity that I found in Activities that Teach. This time, students were with their Classcraft teams again. We went outside, as I knew this was going to be a rowdy activity.Here's how I ran the activity:
- Each team received 10 toothpicks and 10 mini-marshmallows. I used multi-colored ones because it made the second half of the activity more difficult.
- I told them to create a 2D design with their materials. As I have high schoolers, I found out pretty quick that I had to remind them to create a design that is school-appropriate.
- While the teams were working, I set a pile of materials (toothpicks and marshmallows) in a new area (one pile of materials per team).
- Also while teams were working I walked around and assigned each person a role. My teams had 3-4 people and there were 3 roles.
- Messenger
- Explainer
- Builder (if I had a group of four, I designated two builders)
- Once all teams were done designing, I explained the next portion of the activity. I told the builders to move to another area and sit next to a pile of materials that I set out while they were working.
- I then explained what I wanted the other two to do.
- I told each team that they would be moving to another team's design.
- The messenger's job was to tell the builder how to replicate the new design, but there's a catch: the messenger cannot look at the new design and also cannot look at what the builder is building. They must relay messages but not look at either design.
- The explainer's job was to tell the messenger what to say to the builder.
- Basically, the explainer was describing what the design looked like, the messenger told the builder, and the builder replicated it.
- I added a twist as well: the replicated design had to have the exact same colors as the original and in the same exact positions. This made the activity much harder, but I found it wasn't necessary for the purpose of the activity to sink in.
- I did find out after assigning roles that I made a colorblind student into an explainer... their team didn't do so well, but they didn't mention it to me until halfway through! They were good sports about it, but I suppose it doesn't hurt to make sure that colorblind students are the messengers and not builders or explainers!
- I also told my students that they would be earning XP in our game, depending on how much the replicated design mirrored the first one. I gave them a score out of 100.
Students figured out pretty quick that this activity was hard, but if you had a good explainer and a messenger who listened well, the replicated design turned out pretty well in the end.
We had a short discussion afterward about the importance of communication (the questions in the book Activities that Teach were excellent for our discussion) and then I had my students answer the following questions on Google Classroom:
- What happened during the activity?
- How did your team do?
- What was easy?
- What was difficult?
- What did you learn about communication from this activity?
They were able to earn up to 200 XP for answering the questions in complete sentences.
Here were some of their reflections:
"We had to go outside and make a 2d structure with our team and have another team try to communicate how to build our structure. Our team didn't do as good as some of the other teams but I thought we did pretty good. It was easy for me because I was the explainer so I just had to look at the structure and explain how it was built. It was difficult for the messenger to remember what I had explained and it was difficult for the builder to build what was explained to them. I learned that it is important to be able to communicate well with people around you to help you get things done."
"The activity was fun but it was very challenging. Our team did okay but I think we could have done better if we moved a little quicker and spoke directly. The easy part of this activity was building our own design because we could make whatever we wanted. The difficult part was trying to remake a different group’s design. I learned that communication is very important during group activities. If you say the wrong thing or are not very direct, the entire situation falls apart. I also learned that it’s not about talking fast but giving the right information even if it’s a little slower and takes more time."
"During the activity we had to build and initial 2-d structure out of marshmallows and tooth picks and the. We had to switch with another group and build it blind folded to the best mirror image we could. Our team did pretty well building a hard to copy shape but then we didn’t do so good at re making someone else’s. The easy part of the game was building the first shape and making it hard to copy. The difficulty came when we had to make someone else’s blindfolded. I learned that you have to be patient and work well with others to have good communication."
"In our teams, we were assigned to build a 2-D shape out of marshmallows and tooth picks. Once that was done, our team was assigned the position of either the builder, the messenger, or the explainer. We then shifted over to a different groups shape and the explainer had to explain to the messenger what the shape was without the messenger looking and then the messenger had to explain to the builder what to build. You also had to use the same colored marshmallows as the originals. I would say I team did fairly well considering the amalgamation of a shape we were given. The easy parts of this project were creating your own shape and telling the builder what they needed to build.
The difficult parts of the project were trying to explain the shape without causing mass confusion and also trying to sprinkle in the information of what color the marshmallows were without that also causing more confusion. I learned that communication is very difficult if you aren’t given the correct information or aren’t given the full picture of the subject."
Curious about the other activities that I did in the First Week of School?
