Red Solo Cup Challenge

This is a great beginning of the year/end of the year cooperative challenge. Students needed to work together using a rubber band and string to lift cups and put them into formations. It seemed impossible at first, but soon students mastered it. To begin, start with a a rubber band for each group (I had eight groups) and tie four strings to each rubber band. Create groups of four. Then have students practice lifting and changing the direction of a cup. Like this:

Next, start with challenges like, put the cups into a pyramid:

Easy does it.

Then make it even more difficult by starting with this shape. 

         And moving them to this:

Not so easy!

I decided to keep going until the students couldn't do it anymore (or they gave up), which ended up being 10 cups. At that point, it got too difficult to keep four sets of hands steady enough to build a pyramid. Overall, I would definitely do this again. It was so rewarding to hear the kids talking to each other and forming a plan on how to accomplish the challenges. Several of the students came up to me later and thanked me for introducing this to them. Winning!