Orientation Week - Day 2

Another day, and another series of challenges for our new team of students. First up was a Scavenger Hunt out in the schoolyard; students had to find a range of items on a list, from a brown leaf to a hair tie, a teacher's autograph to a 15-letter word, and much more.

This was followed by the ever-popular bridge building competition. For those of you new to the Mordi Experience blog, the challenge is to construct a bridge out of newspaper, masking tape and drinking straws. It is not only judged on its design (ie: it looks like a bridge!), but also on how much weight it can hold. The record weight going into this term was 200 golf balls, and one sensed that this record could fall sooner rather than later. Below, you can see the construction phase of this project.

The bridge below belonged to Lizeth, Lynette, Jamie and Simone. It scored high in design, and set a mark of 190 golf balls for the others to beat.

Chad, Daniel, Tim, Brad, Luke and Alex also built a bridge that held a substantial weight of 170 golf balls, but needed a couple of design tips along the way before this photo was taken . . .

Tayla, Paris, Emily F and Emily P weren't so fortunate with their creation, but for its size, a weight of 89 balls wasn't a bad effort.

Jayde, Abbey, Melissa, Lonni and Ashleigh set a new record for weight that a bridge could hold, with 202 golf balls. Unfortunately, we ran out of golf balls this time round; may have been some light-fingered golfers in terms gone past . . . !

While not captured on the camera, the bridge belonging to Rhys R, Matthew, Josh, Alyssa, Natalie and Felicity held 194 golf balls. Once again, some of those golf balls seemed to have gone missing: hmmm . . .

Our overall winner for design and functionality was this bridge below, belonging to Tanya, Jessica, Claire and Jayden: it held a weight of 162 golf balls. For the most part, the standard of bridge construction was outstanding, showing that as each term passes, the knowledge is being passed down and improved upon.



The final challenge for the day was the Waterbomb Drop. The challenge was to construct a device or contraption that would allow a waterbomb to be safely dropped from a height down to the ground without bursting.

The application of ideas was outstanding once again, with everyone's bombs surviving the descent from our balcony down to the ground.

Tomorrow, we test the students' teamwork skills further with a Staff Biography Quiz, some sport, and a Cryptic Clue challenge in the schoolyard. We will develop our out-of-class Code of Cooperation, and allow the students to create their very own digital portfolio. See you then!