Mr. Rutherford writes: In IB Music today, we had a creative competition between the boys and girls (I have 2 of each in this class) to see how we can use music and non-verbal skills to accomplish a team task, much like we do when we perform music in an ensemble. The students were given drinking straws and 30 seconds to strategize how they can build the tallest free-standing structure made from the straws using non-verbal communication. They were then instructed to begin when I played a piece of music for them which provided the background and time limit for the task. In this case, we used Khachaturian’s ‘Sabre Dance’. Similar to musical chairs, they were to build silently until the music stopped. The winners (Jody Mitchell and Janet Lau) are pictured below and the girls prevailed with a structure measuring a little over 2 feet tall! Unfortunately, the boys didn’t do so well and their structure did not stand…
