Spaghetti Tower Challenge

Part of Job Retention skills is having good communication, collaboration and cooperation skills; among many other skills. This Team Building Skills Activity consisted of 4 team members who were given 3 feet of tape, 3 feet of sting, 20 spaghetti sticks and ONE marshmallow that had to remain at the very top!

Each team followed a different process.... plan, sketch, discussed, started building right away, etc.

Analyzing Questions:

1. How did you team begin this process? My team stared by brainstorming up ideas for this tower of pasta.

2. What did you find easy? What was a challenge? Why do you think so? I found the actual ideas the easiest part of the whole activity. the most challenging aspect would have to be the construction which involved a many broken noodles.

3. What age group do you feel THIS activity may be BEST for?....... Kinder? Elementary? Middle? High School? College Students? Graduate Students? Those with many years of job experience? CEO's? Retired Individuals? Because these students are in need of teamwork skills and might be working on this as a retention activity or a group project.

Paragraph #1: Leadership

• Was there a leader on your team? 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?

My team didn't necessarily have a designated leader to guide the group, instead people would throw ideas and we would discuss the topic at hand. I don't believe that a designated leader would have helped the group in the long run. I believe that the leader would have just dismissed other ideas and we wouldn't have heard out our challenge winning idea from the rest of the group.

Paragraph #2: Collaboration

• What did collaboration look like and sound like in this process?

• Did you feel everyone's ideas were well received during the activity?

• How was your frustration/patience level?

• Were all teammates included?

I feel that collaboration looked like us working as a team and that it sounded like us talking together to both brainstorm and to build and hold as needed in the construction aspect of the challenge. Everyone's ideas were well received in the brainstorm yet afterwards were pushed away in your climb to the top. Our frustration was justified and our patience was understandably low as the timer started to run lower and lower. All the teammates had a role to play and everyone helped in the final construction of the tower.

Paragraph #3: Planning

• Did your team have a plan?

• Did the plan work?

• Did you veer from the plan at all? Why or why not?

• What worked?

• What didn’t work?

Our team was very meticulous in our planing of the tower, we sketched out the multiple possibilities and found the best ones for our purposes.

Paragraph #4: All About Me

• What did you learn about yourself throughout this activity?

• Are you a leader? Do you work well in groups? Do you work well under pressure? Do you become frustrated under pressure?

• What is something you could work on in the next challenge activity?