Har-Bur CTOM World Finals 2018

Odyssey of the mind is an international program that provides creative problem solving opportunities for students from kindergarten to college. Teams apply their creativity to solve problems that range from building a structure to building a mechanical device to performing an interpretation of literary classics. Without assistance from adults. Each team has a coach to guide them, however, this program is all student based. All problems include a dramatic interpretation. Our students competed March 17, 2018 at Southern Connecticut State University in the state competition. Winners of the state competition advance to the World Finals held in Iowa at Iowa State University.

Our team of 6th graders from Har-Bur Middle School (Region 10) in Burlington, CT have been competing together since 4th grade. We are proud to say this is their 2nd, consecutive, trip to World Finals! This year they came in first over all in Division II with their Long Term Problem “Emoji, Speak for Yourself”. They also were awarded the Jill Riggles award which honors the team who earned the highest score on their spontaneous problem. This means they solved a problem spontaneously presented to them in limited time with few materials. They did this exceedingly well using communication, creativity, teamwork and problem solving skills.

With the guidance of our coach our children put together a wonderfully crafted comical skit .Their chosen problem statement: Three-dimensional emoji’s will be used to communicate the life story of a once famous, but now forgotten, emoji. Teams create a performance where the emoji’s demonstrate special functions like growing, turning into a team member, and changing into a different emoji. Performances also include a choreographed dance, technical representation of texting as well as sounds to enhance the performance. The twist? No spoken language is allowed in their performance!

World Finals:
Over 800 teams from around the world will compete in the 38th Odyssey of the Mind World Finals. The competition emphasizes creativity and teamwork and has grown into the largest international creative problem-solving competition worldwide. Millions of children have been working hard all year for a chance at World Finals. Only a few will advance. Our team is among the well-deserving World Finalists! This exciting journey is something we are all proud of. In order to make it happen, each team has to raise the necessary funds to support the trip to Iowa. This includes travel, lodging and food for our 6 students and 1 coach. Our fundraising goal is $10,000 for our trip May 23-26, 2018.