Teams of five to seven members work together to apply creativity, critical thinking and their particular talents to solve a Team Challenge.  The Challenge is solved over a period of eight weeks or more. There are five competitive Team Challenges and one non-competitive challenge from which teams may choose, each with its own educational focus. Each Team Challenge is designed to be open-ended and solvable in many ways and on many levels.

This year, Horace Mann had two teams.  We had one team of 2^nd graders and one team of 3^rd and 4^th graders participating in the DI tournament. They presented their solutions on Saturday, March 7, at the regional competition at Harding High School. The 2^nd Great Graders team members were Andrew, Leah, Taylor, Madison, Liam, Flynn, and Henry. The members on the 3^rd/4^th grade team, The 7 Super Smarties were Erin, Emma, Corinne, Nicole, Grace, Nicolas, and Leland.  They had a wonderful time and did a fantastic job at the competition.

The 2^nd Great Graders team challenge was to imagine what happens in a hidden place.  The team made up a play that included characters, a gadget, a song, and solved a problem.  The team’s hidden place was in the vent!  Doesn’t everyone wonder what is inside the vent?  The 7 Super Smarties chose the challenge, “A new angle.”  They needed to construct a structure made completely of wood that would support weight.  They also needed to create and present a story about the merging of two forms of art to create a new form of artistic expression.  As you can tell from the description, this problem had no easy solution.  The team had to work together to come up with a unique way of solving this challenge.

Each team also participated in the Instant Challenge.  An instant challenge is a problem given to the team that they need to work together and solve in 2 to 5 minutes.  The teams are critiqued on their creativity.  The judges also look at their knack for improvisation, their flair for performance, their time-management strategies, and their teamwork.