Wifi's Down! Cup Challenges

We are lucky to usually have very good wifi in my school, but occasionally it stops working. Today Grade 6 had a summative presentation. One group were able to present, but then our wifi stopped working. I have a bunch of stand by projects and games for students to do when something like this happens - the most popular and simple is a cup challenge!

I have 5 x 100 plastic cups (as the cups are being re-used over and over again, it is fine that they are plastic). I also have a basket full of blankets for when we have a cold classroom, (or for summer picnics when it warms up). I picked five volunteers, and we took the five stacks of cups and five blankets to the foyer area. The blankets were spread out and each had a stack up of cups on them. I randomly assigned the students to the blankets/cups. We then played two fifteen minute games!

1. Students need to make the highest tower
2. Students need to make the highest tower and must use EVERY cup.

Additional Rules:
Students are not allowed to touch the blanket at all.
If they touch the blanket, I knock down the cups!

Super simple and super fun! They were hooting and laughing and having an excellent time. All students were engaged and they worked very well together. This is an excellent challenge for communication, collaboration and thinking skills (problem solving). I think this would also work well for PD time!

They all improved how they worked together for the second challenge - for example, one team realised they could build a tower that was 14 cups high, which was very strong. They would wait to see how the other teams worked, and if they built a taller tower, they would then add additional cups to their own tower, but only in the last few minutes. In the first game some students built very tall towers quickly, but they fell down!

Here are some highlights: