Inventors and Leaders

After students seem to have a good understanding of what an instant challenge is, we can then start working on the big challenge as well. The big challenge this year for our group is to choose something from history and change it. Think about what happened in the past and how might it have been different? What if it did not work? What if it had been bigger? What if it did something else? They must show the judges what MIGHT have happened.

They must also create a play that is no longer than 8 minutes. For this play, they must create believable characters that can either be people, animals, or objects. The plot of the play must also have a good beginning, middle, and end. They must also create a song. They can make up their own song, or make new words to a song they already know. The last thing that they need to incorporate is a magical prop. They must use four shapes in some way on their prop.

In order to prepare students for their big challenge, we read books such as What Would It be Like to Live 100 Years from Now, by Ann McGovern. We discussed questions like what would it be like to live in a society that didn't have television, or electricity?

We also looked at several inventions such as chewing gum, the airplane, the car, the light bulb, and peanut butter, just to name a few. We discussed what kind of characteristics it takes to invent something and what the world would be like without these inventions.

We then studied Civil Rights Leaders such as Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Ruby Bridges, and John F Kennedy. We discussed what it means to feel left out and how African Americans must have felt with this movement of "separate, but equal." We also defined segregation and asked students how they might feel living during this time period.

Students then decided that they would like to focus on Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King for their historical reference. They decided that their magical prop would be a school bus that would propel them back into time. The questions the students kept coming back to was "What if Rosa Parks had NOT given up her seat?" How would this have changed history? While Ruby, Maeve, and Erin worked on creating the bus, Alex, Coretta, and Katherine worked on the script. I have included a picture of the magical school bus at the top. So far, we are off to an excellent start!!