Marshmallow challenge

This semester, I've been teaching critical/creative thinking classes to one of my groups of 8th graders. School in Peru typically involves a lot of teacher-teaching, students-copying down and memorizing. Consequently, brain-teaser exercises that their American peers might find routine represent a serious challenge for my Peruvian students. Activities like scattergories, identifying what three grouped items have in common, identifying which item in a group is an outlier, and distinguishing between facts and opinions have enabled our class to practice how to think in a context where there is no one right answer. 

This week's activity was no different, but made for some good photo-ops: the marshmallow challenge. Here's how it works - each team of 4-5 receives an identical set of materials: 20 dry spaghetti noodles, 1m of string, 1m of masking tape, and one marshmallow. The challenge is to build the tallest free-standing tower possible using only the given materials and 18 minutes of time, with the caveat that the marshmallow must be the tower's highest point (its weight is what makes things tricky). Being boys, my kiddos got super into the challenge! Although competition was fierce, the winning tower ended up measuring around 50cm. First prize? The rest of the bag of marshmallows :)