Building the tallest tower made of marshmallows and spaghetti noodles is a pretty daunting task!
Our group kind of chose Vicki as the leader of the group, because she told us she had done similar activities. The rest of us were quite unsure of what to do, so we let Vicki lead us.
Everyone had ideas for the tower and different ways to build it. Everyone participated in different ways. Some of us broke spaghetti noodles, others tore the marshmallow apart, and the rest helped to construct the tower. Everybody was helpful and followed Vicki’s ideas.
Building a tower out of marshmallows and dry spaghetti noodles is frustrating in itself. Towards the end of the challenge when our tower kept falling, we all got frustrated (but who wouldn’t?) but that made us work that much harder. Nobody tuned out when we started to feel the pressure of building a marshmallow and spaghetti noodle tower in the time constraint.
Everyone was able to give their ideas, and they were well-received by each group member. Any idea towards the end was tried in hopes that we could build a good tower.
The time limit definitely increased the pressure of building the tower. As we got closer to the end, more ideas started to flow and people became more involved in trying to get the tower built.
In retrospect, we could have done more planning at the beginning. We could have had more plans for when the first plan failed. We neglected to discuss further options because we believed that we would be able to build it with the first plan, therefore, we ended our planning strategy early. If we kept discussing more options we may have had a better outcome.
Even though our tower broke our communication didn’t break.
Questions:
- Was there a leader in your group? Who was it and who decided who the leader would be?
- If you had no leader, do you think having designated someone a leader would have helped?
- How helpful was everyone on your team in the process of building the tallest structure? Did anyone appear to be an expert?
- Did any team members tune out the activity–out of frustration with other members or for some other reason? What could you have done to keep all members of the group fully engaged?
- Did you feel everyone’s ideas were well received during the activity?
- How did you feel as the time limit was approaching? Did pressure increase? If yes, was that helpful or not?
- In retrospect, what could you have done differently throughout this process?