Teamwork

This week, the 5th-8th grade classes read Teamwork Isn't My Thing and I Don't Like to Share by Julia Cook.

 

When we finished reading the book, I divided the classes into two groups then gave each group five cups and a rubber band with four strings. 

The challenge was to create pyramid out of the cups using only the rubber band and string. The students could not touch the cups! Some of the teams built a pyramid within two minutes while other teams took up to 10 minutes. Some of the students got frustrated and wanted to quit. Other students got frustrated but were determined to not give up. Throughout class, I switched students from team to team so that they could practice interacting with all of their classmates.  The students found that the other students couldn't read their minds and that they had to communicate effectively so that they all pulled the string at the right time and in the right direction. 

After the students tried several formations, I ended the lesson with the following questions:

How are you feeling after the challenge?

Who thinks they were good at teamwork?  
What traits make a good teammate?
What did you learn about yourself? 
About your teammates?

What did you learn about teamwork?

What are some skills needed to be good at teamwork?

How can we use what we learned in the Cup Challenge outside of this class?

The 45-minute multisensory lesson plan is available here.