As part of their study of The Phantom Tollbooth in English and Math class, Mrs. Silsby and Mr. Ratti arranged for the 7th graders to be able to construct dodecahedrons with the help of a local contractor  Mr. Whitbeck who is part of the Northeast Construction Trades Workforce Coalition (NCTWC).

Here is a recap of the day by the numbers (true to Digitopolis in The Phantom Tollbooth)

# of sides on a dodecahedron=12

# of corners and edges that make up each face of the dodecahedron=5

# of edges on a dodecahedron=30

# of miter cuts at 36 degrees that have to be cut to connect the 5 pieces for each face: 10

# of students who went to the nurse during/after because of a battle with the hot glue gun=7

# of descriptions of Mr. Whitbeck overheard after the project=2  (funny and built like a bull dog)

% of students who seemed fully committed to the build: 95%

And now to travel over to Dictionopolis and hear some descriptions of the day:

Lilly R. admitted, “Initially I was not very confident when we started to glue because all it looked like was a whole bunch of wood pieces so I didn’t know how it would turn out. But in the middle of the build, I got more confident because it all started to come together; we had our pentagons built. In the end, I was really confident because we were going to be the first group to finish.”

Abby D. said that after they got into their groups with the wood pieces, they had to do a lot of problem solving: “We started talking about how we were going to build it and what our strategies would be. My group was saying how we should use the pieces of wood that we were using for the top half to hold up the pieces that were drying from the hot glue.” When they returned to their friend groups, each group’s dodecahedron was tested to see if it would support a student’s weight. Abby said her group’s held weight!

Both Alexis S. and Jon S. mentioned the patience needed to work with group members. Alexis shared that if if you lose your patience and “push your team away, then it’s more work for you.” Alexis also pointed out that “rushing is never the answer” and it led to their dodecahedron becoming “really unstable.”

And from Connor W., we have a new word, “Our group had to do a lot of glelding (welding with glue) because there were gaps between our pentagons.”