Teams of students from Washington STEM Academy and Warsaw Area Career Center worked together Friday morning to see who could build the highest free-standing structure. The catch: Their supplies included only 20 spaghetti sticks, 1 yard of masking tape, 1 yard of string, scissors and a marshmallow. The marshmallow had to be a part of the structure but couldn’t be torn into pieces. They also had only 18 minutes to do it. The exercise is called the Marshmallow Challenge. The winning team built a structure measuring 23-3/4 inches high. The highest known Marshmallow Challenge structure is 39 inches. Team members included sixth-graders Jovanna Carrillo Perez, Lexi Gensch, Chloe Romack and seniors Kara Millington and Aleah Hupp. As a prize, each received a giant candy bar. The Second Annual Marshmallow Challenge, according to Washington Principal Tom Ray, shows modern-day learning where learning isn’t by age group anymore. “Learning happens with all ages working together and learning to collaborate,” he said. “In this case, it’s an engineering project.” Sixth-grade teacher Nicole Ryman said, “We actually started this last year with Washington becoming a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) school. My sister attended a workshop over the summer where they did this. She thought it would be a good way to get her co-op students to work with my STEM students.” Her sister is WACC Co-op Work-Based Learning Coordinator Angie Heinsman. “It promotes teamwork,” Heinsman said. “My students work half a day and attend school the other half day. Teamwork is a soft skill that businesses often tell us students need.” When students participate in the Marshmallow Challenge, she said, they have an initial perception of how to do it, but it’s interesting to see how that changes when they’re finished. Studies show that the people who typically do best in the challenge are engineers and architects, followed by kindergartners. Heinsman told the students that business students usually do poorly because they get caught up in who will be in charge. Millington said the key to her team winning was just working together and thinking of ideas together. They didn’t focus on one idea. “We just created a strong base and kept it strong throughout. We made corrections throughout,” Hupp commented. Every time it fell, Perez stated, they had to redo it and she felt her heart pounding. She wasn’t sure they could do it, and she felt nervous the whole time. Gensch commented, “I learned the more stable the base, the more teamwork, the better the base will be.” Romack said she was kind of nervous working with the high school students. “I didn’t know what would happen. When we worked together, it turned out well.” For more about the Marshmallow Challenge, visit the website www.marshmallowchallenge.com
