The Tower Challenge

If my PE classes are confined to their classrooms, I will often give them a team challenge. I’ve used these challenges for grades 3 thru 5 with great success, because they encourage cooperation, collaboration and creative thinking. Each challenge must be completed within a specific time frame. This adds an element of urgency and a sense of competition to the challenges.

I use each challenge only once per year, but repeat them from year to year. This allows kids to learn from their previous experience with the challenges, which often results in new solutions.

The first challenge I use each year is what I call the Tower Challenge. Here’s how it works:

1. Divide the class into 4 teams.
2. Provide each team with one newspaper (my school gets the Marin I.J. everyday. Hardly anyone reads it, so I keep them) and one roll of masking tape.
3. Describe the challenge:
• Using only the newspaper and the tape, build the tallest structure you can.
• Teams will have 2 minutes to plan and 10 minutes to build
• At the end of the period, the team which builds the tallest structure that can stand on its own for 30 seconds will win.
• The tape may be used only to hold the structure together. It may not be uses to attach the structure to anything. In fact, the structure cannot be attached to the surface on which it is built, overhead wires or anything else. Teams may not build their structures around anything, such as a pencil box, in an effort to make it stronger.
4. Do not allow the teams to touch any of their equipment until the building period begins.
5. Teams which break rules will receive a time penalty in which they will be forced to stop building for a specified period of time.
6. Once everyone understands the rules begin the challenge.
7. At the end of the building period, have everyone step away from their structures.
8. Measure the structures, announce the height of the winning structure (the tallest I’ve seen was 52 inches, but I’ve had winners as short as 18 inches.
9. Debrief – have the kids share their successful ideas.

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