While Mr. Davis is away, grade 7 students have been managing funds, making purchases and constructing toothpick bridges in a competitive effort to hold the most weight. Some students have been surprised by the importance of paying attention to details in instructions, designing their product carefully, and planning expenditures.
One group damaged their original supplies and had to spend valuable resources to ‘purchase’ more, others have been ‘audited’ and errors in calculations have been ‘fined’. A common frustration is the realization that they don’t have enough money to complete their ideas because their written plans were not detailed enough to estimate expenses and financial shortcomings were not evident until the building process began.
Such a simple project, but students are quickly discovering the reality of working with severely limited resources.
