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Angie Grant Elementary team wins, advances to Destination ImagiNation global competition |
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Thursday, 24 April 2008 |
The Destination ImagiNation Team from Angie Grant Elementary in Benton recently received a “wild card” at state competition to advance to the annual global competition at Knoxville, Tenn.
Along with two other Benton teams, Angie Grant team will be competing in Knoxville on May 20-25 with teams from throughout the world.
The Destination ImagiNation team challenge is a challenge that is solved over a period of eight weeks or more. There are five competitive team challenges 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, a spokesperson said.
The Angie Grant team chose the “Hit or Myth” challenge. The team had to choose a foreign country, find a myth native to that country, develop creative and innovative ways to test the myth using the scientific method, and create an original eight-minute performance to share their results with the audience.
The Angie Grant team chose Djibouti, a small country in eastern Africa. According to the native myth, trees have sacred powers. The team’s hypothesis is that trees do not have sacred powers.
The team’s responsibilities included creating ways to test the hypothesis, building portable props, making their costumes and writing an original script.
“I like to refer to DI as sports for the brain,” team manager Shaun McFarland said.
“It’s an amazing process to see these kids develop an entire original storyline and performance from the outline of the challenge. The level of teamwork this team has achieved is advanced beyond their years.”
Destination ImagiNation is not really a program, it’s a process, McFarland said.
“You’ve heard of spelling bees, quiz bowls, robotics competitions and science fairs. In fact, there is probably a special event for every subject taught at school,” he said.
Destination ImagiNation is a place where students take what they know and what they are good at and learn to apply it to solve challenges, work together cooperatively as a team and push the limits of imagination.
Team members engage in creative problem solving and develop life-long skills that carry over into everyday life. Most of all, they will have fun, discover talents they never knew they had, become friends with kids they might not have ever met, and reap the rewards of teamwork and friendship as they grow and learn.
In the Benton School District, Destination ImagiNation is part of the gifted and talented program, which is directed by Bill Waskom, supervisor of gifted programs and special projects.
Donna McDowd, literacy coach and teacher at Angie Grant, applied for and won a grant several years ago that helps fund the district’s participation in the Destination ImagiNation program.
Through the Benton School District’s gifted and talented program, teams are enabled to participate at regional, state and global competitions. However, each team that reaches the global level of competition is responsible for fundraising for extracurricular activities while in Knoxville.
Anyone wanting to help support the Angie Grant team may call Tanya McFarland at 840-7200. |
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