Last week we tried a challenge in Science where kiddos had to create a representation of a body of water.  Since then, I’ve heard multiple times “When are we doing this again?”  Then, when my friend, Mona, asked me if I was planning on doing the same thing with landforms I knew we just had to!

I didn’t want to make the situation exactly the same, however, so I thought of ways I could change the parameters to up the level of the challenge.  Last time, students chose their own group, as well as the materials they used to build.  It was great that somehow everyone chose something different and there was no arguing about who used what.  That doesn’t happen a lot in our room, but I was super glad it didn’t come up here.  So this time I again let them choose who they worked with (which because of numbers was groups or 2 or 3), but there as more chance in both their landform AND their building material.  I wrote the choices on index cards (very high tech, I know) and put them in two cans.  Each group chose one from each container.

I was impressed with how easily kiddos accepted both of the cards without complaining.  Again, not much of that happens with Rm. 202 friends, but I was pleased with how quickly they got to work planning their next moves.  After about 3-4 minutes, most were ready.  There was only one pair who did fuss a teeny bit about how they’d be done really fast and how their cards were not a challenge.  We talked about how that meant that they needed to figure a way to challenge themselves, ask themselves “What could we do differently than we had originally planned?”

Much like last time, they had 25 minutes to work on their representations and then we’d do a gallery walk to see if we could guess what everyone had created.  They were to work for the entire time and had to use their assigned medium, but other than that there weren’t too many rules.

Ok, here’s your chance to see if you can figure out our landform creations, and then I’ll give you the answers.

What do you think? Did you guess them?  Here are the answers:

1. plains
2. hills
3. valley
4. barrier islands
5. canyon
6. plateau
7. mountains

We love how building challenges work for learners in Rm. 202, and we want to know how they work for you.  Any stories to tell us?  What suggestions do you have for future design challenges we could try?