Today at Bentheim Elementary we embarked on a major challenge at the website Fantastic Contraption.com. Mrs. Miles' 4th grade class started by designing contraptions and testing them in attempts of completing Level 19, Back and Forth. Students have to place the pink circle show above in the pink rectangle to the right. What makes this difficult is that a contraption has to be built within the blue-outlined box. They will have to move left, get the circle, and then somehow send it to the right.
Instead of everyone working on their own secret ideas, everyone shared their ideas, and when one or two looked promising, groups began to build upon their classmates' ideas...not steal them. The fourth graders worked diligently all hour but didn't get quite finished. That is okay because Mr. Lancaster's class will pick up the project right where the others left off. Will they be able to solve this challenge?
If you can solve "Back and Forth (on page 2 of puzzles) please link to it in the comments area.
Part 2: Success
Thanks to lots of hard work from both classes, Logan and Kyle from Mr. Lancaster's class achieved the final solution to this puzzle. It was just those two who solved it. Everyone was engaged in solving this problem. Those two just happened to be the ones who built upon many different ideas to reach the goal first.
Not only did we learn how to solve problems as a group, we learned that many different contributions go into a final outcome. We couldn't have done this without great individual efforts.
Here is video of how the goal was finally achieved.
See the actual design and tweak it some more at Fantastic Contraption.com.
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