The Skyscraper Challenge for all Ages!

Hi everyone!

Thanks for tuning into my first blog post. This week, in my Mathematics Teaching course for Intermediate/Senior, my professor sectioned us off into groups to complete the Skyscraper Challenge. For those of you who have never heard of this activity, I have provided a picture, as well as a video below to help you visualize.

In this activity, we used linking cubes to make towers. Since this is a 4x4 square we were only able to use linking cube towers in groups of 1, 2, 3, or 4. For all of you Sudoku lovers out there, this game is very similar because each row and column must have one set of 1, 2, 3, and 4 linking cube towers; repeats are not allowed. The numbers along the sides of the square represent how many "towers of linking cubes" you will be able to see when you look from that direction.

Before my class began the activity, we were given a limited amount of instruction, and we were not explicitly told what the numbers on the sides of the square represented. My group struggled for about 10-15 minutes on our own; we asked each other questions, tested out conjectures, and failed. We were stumped. Finally, we asked our teacher for a bit more guidance, and also looked to the internet as a resource, in order to help us find a clue to solve the puzzle. Once we discovered that we needed to be able to see a given number of "towers/buildings" from each square, we set off to solve the problem! It was fun and exciting to play around with the towers of linking cubes, in order to see what satisfied all of the requirements of the given puzzle. I felt myself smiling and laughing with my group, and I almost didn't want to stop when our teacher finally called our class in for a group discussion of the activity.

My teacher informed us that this activity was actually used in a grade 1 classroom to help them develop spacial reasoning. Some of you may be wondering how a grade 1 student, who is barely 6 years old, can solve a puzzle that is still challenging for university students. At first, I was questioning this too, but then I realized that sometimes, without meaning to, we can underestimate the capabilities of our students.

I remember when I was little, and being told that I was too young to do or learn something. My parents would tell me that I could do/learn this when I was older. I would badger them with questions like, "Why do I have to be older? How much older do I have to be? When exactly will you be able to tell me these things?" and as a last resort, when they still wouldn't give into me, I would use the, "I'm old enough now! I can understand things!" card. I was always frustrated when my age hindered me from learning news things, and I could not wait to be older!

I wonder if teaching is similar. My professor gave this activity to a grade 1 class, not knowing if they would be able to solve it or not. However, the results surprised her. She found that these students discovered solutions to the puzzle through play based learning. These students did not get frustrated by not knowing the answer, they just continued to try, play and learn. One of my peers from my English Teaching class brought up the point that we wait until students reach a certain age to teach them about new topics. In math, we deem that by grade 11, students will be capable of learning functions. What makes a grade 10 student different from a grade 11 student? One year? We believe that when students are 15, they are not ready to learn about functions, but when they turn 16, they have reached the perfect age. Is this right? Could it be that by waiting to teach students about these complex concepts, that we are reinforcing the giant learning gap that exists between each grade? What would happen if we introduced topics earlier? Would this help ease students anxiety over mathematics if they were exposed to these concepts at an earlier age, so that by the time that they reached the required age of learning, these concepts would already be familiar?

I know that I have raised a lot of questions that I don't necessarily have the answers to. However, I feel that this issue is something to consider. Sometimes, we do make assumptions about students based on their  age, grade level, or stream (academic, applied or locally developed). By giving students the opportunity to try activities that we feel may be above their grade level, we may be surprised by what we see. If we find that students are struggling to understand the concept, we can provide more scaffolding and guidance to help them along; however, if we notice that they are able to solve these problems on their own with very little assistance, our assumptions will no longer be valid. We need to give students a chance to try new things, in order to expose them to these concepts/strategies/ways of thinking earlier, so that their learning will be continuous and familiar, instead of abrupt, disconnected, and something to be feared.

If you would like to use the Skyscraper activity in your classroom, or would simply like to solve the puzzle yourself, there are daily puzzles available at the following link: https://www.brainbashers.com/skyscrapers.asp

Thank you all for reading, and have a wonderful day!

Dayna