Two teams from St. Joseph School in Lake Orion have placed first in their divisions on the state level and now will compete against students from across the country and more than 10 countries and provinces, including teams from Turkey, Brazil, Poland, China, Mexico and Guatemala.
These students have earned the right to take part in the competition of a lifetime at the Destination ImagiNation (DI) Global Finals May 23-26, 2007.
It’s been a fun, tough, exciting and rewarding time for these teams as they worked their way through several levels of competition in order to win a shot at the biggest challenge of them all ? Destination ImagiNation’s Global Finals.
The 8,000 participants that proceed to Global Finals emerge from a field of 350,000 participants.
The Destination ImagiNation program runs annually, and presents students working in teams of up to seven with the opportunity to choose from five mind-bending Team Challenges. While each Team Challenge integrates a variety of chances to learn by doing, Challenges usually feature one prominent task, such as building a load-bearing structure, creating a vehicle, writing a performance piece or exploring history.
The St. Joseph fifth graders competed in Switching Traditions. Their challenge was to create an original six-minute improvisational skit during a 30-minute timed period at the tournament prior to the competition. They researched six selected nations and their traditions.
At the tournament, they randomly chose three to integrate into their skit. Each skit needed three scenes; each included one nation’s tradition and one ‘sensory? experience from the nation that has been randomly drawn from sensory cards. They also had to integrate a randomly selected situation into the skit, create a traditionator from materials brought to the tournament and integrate it into the skit, demonstrate at least one improv technique in the skit and integrate a randomly selected picture into the skit.
Team members are Hayley Boggs, Alaina Richter, Tara Wesolowski, Megan Ward, Julia Grenier, Gabe Wrobel. Managers are Tom and Nancy Wrobel.
The school’s seventh graders competed in Direct Flight. Their challenge was to design and construct one or more aircraft that will fly to one of several landing zones. One of the aircraft will be constructed at the tournament from a single sheet of paper. The team had to design and construct up to three elevators that will raise and release the aircraft.
They randomly selected test flight cards and conducted test flights of the aircraft as described on the cards. They created a skit with a story that brought together all elements of the team’s presentation. This is the third trip to Global Finals for this team!
Team members are Katie Powers, Lyndsey Hurford, Taylor Hargraves, Courtney Cox, Andy Cozier, Keegan Collins, Alex Fontana. Managers are John and Marie Powers.
The program also provides Instant Challenges in which the teams work together to solve shorter challenges within minutes. Besides encouraging and teaching critical thinking and teamwork, these Instant Challenges promote the development of improvisational and quick-thinking skills.