Mrs. Anderson loves to start the year in library/tech with the fifth graders using Lego duck activities. The students are each given a set of six lego bricks and given the direction: You must use all six pieces to build a duck. It is a very simple direction which leads to amazingly different configurations. The challenge activity that comes next is to work in pairs and have one student build a duck that the other student can’t see. They sit back-to-back and the builder has to give directions to his or her partner to try to replicate their design. It is very interesting to watch how students communicate when they can’t see each other’s work and they are trying to only use words. So much fun!
