Paper Tower.

Hi , Have you done any group activity in your life?Guess you have.May be you faced lots of  new challenges when you are engaged with it..Today lets us learn challenges that we face and qualities which we should improve when we do a group activity.

PAPER TOWER.

We built a Tower.Now you will surely imagine a tower like Eiffel. Yes but it was from papers.Madam Sarasi grouped us in to 3 and provided each team with 12 sheets of papers,a scissor,a sellotape and challenged to built a tower from papers within 40 minutes.It should be kept on the ground outside of the class. She gave marks for the balance,height and rigidity of the tower.She marked 3 places on the ground and told us discuss within the group to make a plan.All the groups went outside and started to make the tower.As usual our madam Sarasi didn't allow us to speak in Sinhala as she wants to improve our speaking ability in english.She walked from group to group observing our work and reminding us to speak in English.Finally all three groups managed to make towers which were able to stand on the ground.

Madam Sarasi asked us to leave the towers for 10 minutes and then she blew at each tower to check their balance but unfortunately all the towers felt down.

Do you think that doing a group work is easy?you will be more surprised if i say NO.Yes the answer is no.Let me tell you the reason.

     When we engage in a group activity we should listen to others ideas, we should discuss and come to  a decision which might not be your idea but still you have to respect because it is the decision of the majority.We should help each other.There should be a person to lead the group.All team members must engage in the activity.And very specially we should have a plan.

With all this do you think a group work is easy?But rather than achieving goals individually, we can easily achieve those if we have a strong team.

In the previous article i mentioned in this session we can find our weaknesses as well as our strengths. Through the paper tower activity also we gained lots to our life which are important.

  If I mention about the weaknesses all the groups had no any plan at the beginning. No one discussed with the group how to make this challenge a success.We should have discussed how many papers to use at the base and to increase the height.We all only thought about increasing the height of the tower.And another thing was we didn't have a leader to guide us.The first thing we should have done after discussing was to built the basement of the tower.For all the works, first we should lay a good foundation.We should have share the work within the group to save time.All the team members should work as one. Communication within the team members also plays a great roll. 

We all had good quality of respecting to others ideas.When we realized we should make a proper base to hold the tower we discussed and choosed the best.All the team members actively participated to run  with the time.Finally one of the team members from each group had to talk about the activity.We tried with many strategies. Strategy is something very important when we face challenges.From challenge to challenge strategy which we should apply is different.So we should be brave enough to select the best and correct one at different situations.In this activity strategies to make it a success were to have a good base or in other words foundation for the tower.

The roll of each team member is very important in this kind of challenges.In future we have to work in many many people,many fields and in different environments. So we should improve our soft skills to face those.As i say it will always help you to see and fly over the horizon which we all dream

of.