On January 27, Brookfield and Newtown Odyssey of the Mind teams came together again for the fourth year to put on a Spontaneous Scrimmage for their teams. Odyssey of the Mind is a creative thinking competition in which Brookfield schools send teams in five categories to compete against other Connecticut schools at the state tournament on March 31.
In order to have the teams prepared for the Spontaneous portion of this competition, Brookfield works with Newtown coaches to put on a scrimmage so the teams can get practice as well as to know what to expect at the state tournament.
Ninety Brookfield students from , and the went to Reed Intermediate School in Newtown to participate in the Brookfield/Newtown Spontaneous Scrimmage after school on Friday, January 27. Six high school team members, who have been participating in Odyssey of the Mind since fifth grade, were judges at the scrimmage with OM teams’ volunteer coaches.
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A spontaneous problem is a problem provided to the OM team that they have to solve within a short period of time. They are given few household materials such as toothpicks, string, tape, straws and spaghetti and asked to solve a problem. For example, build a scale to raise raisins or build a remote control device that can ring a bell and turn pages in a book from 6 feet away. There are also verbal problems that might ask the team to come up with creative answers. An example of a verbal problem is what would you say if you were stuck in a spider’s web. The team gets score for teamwork as well as creativity of solution and accomplishing the task.
Brookfield this year has four teams from Huckleberry, six teams from Whisconier and one team from the high school. Since there is no one solution to a spontaneous problem, the scrimmage is a great opportunity for the three schools’ teams to get together and see how other teams would solve the same problem.
