Spaghetti Construction

This is one of those activities that will make you laugh and laugh until you cry.

Pre-Watching
- take in a packet of spaghetti, enough marshmallows to go around the groups (I usually give out 3 per group which is different from the video). Give them some cellotape and string - whatever you can drum up from the staffroom!  Tell the students the goal is to build the highest tower out of spaghetti. They have 18minutes to do this in.

- laugh a lot.

- at the end of the laughter, ask the students to tell you what the point of the activity was.


Watching
- let students watch the video.  If a fairly low-level group, turn on the English subtitles. Write on the board "What is the core message of this video?"

Post watching
- get students to discuss in pairs what they felt the core message was and what they learned from it.

- ask the students then to tell you what was different in the video from the activity they did themselves and what they learned - how would they have built their towers differently?  If no one put the marshmallow on top, what do they think would have happened in their constructions?

- which construction was the most interesting they saw? Why?

- ask students for their opinions on why children are particularly good at this activity and why recent graduates from Business school aren't. Why are architects the best of all?  Why does having an Executive admin on the team help?

- what did Tom Wujec say about the addition of "incentives"?  What is the key take-away from that information?

- ask the students if they feel that this particular activity would be interesting to do with their real work colleagues in their own countries. Why or why not?


- finally, get students to collaborate again, by writing instructions on how to create the perfect spaghetti tower.