Term 2 Week 4

Boost 2
The boys loved their Boost session today.  We continued with our Habits of Mind today, mainly persisting and managing self (overcoming obstacles).  I gave the boys a technology challenge, which really brings out their creative thinking side.  Today's challenge involved half a packet of uncooked spaghetti and 20 mini marshmallows.

Firstly, we put on our creative thinking hats and tried to think outside the box – what could we do with these items?  Here are some of the suggestions:
Make a marshmallow kebab on the spaghetti stick.
Make a back scratcher with the spaghetti.
Make drumsticks with the spaghetti.
Make an arrow
Make a slingshot to shoot marshmallows at you.
Make a nose picker.
Make a marshmallow chess set, they could be the pawns.

Practising this type of thinking is great for thinking of new ways to use old things, inventing, building and expanding the mind.

I then set a challenge for the boys, they had to make the tallest tower possible with the same materials.  We talked before we started the task,  and discussed the need for group work – what it will look like and sound like.  I was looking for things such as eye contact with the rest of the group, encouraging comments to their peers, encouraging someone to participate if they are standing back, talking with their group and agreeing on a plan/strategy.  We also talked about the need to manage your emotions/behaviour and catch yourself (or others) giving up.  We talked about what strategies we can use instead of refusing to participate.  The children loved the task and I really loved seeing them trying hard to work together.

After our tech challenge the boys couldn't wait to start playing chess.  Today we learned that sending a soldier out on it's own is not a good move, he'll be defeated.  You need to make sure that your chess pieces are protected, or 'covered' by another piece, as much as possible.  We also talked about the value of each piece, roughly speaking a queen is worth 9, a rook is worth 5, bishops and knights are worth 3 and pawns are worth 1.   This means that it is not worth taking your opponents pawn, if it means losing your queen!  It also helps figure out who won, when the game has to end early.