Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 17, 1993 TAG: 9303170379
SECTION: MISCELLANEOUS PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WENDI GIBSON RICHERT NEWSFUN WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
IMAGINATIONS' CREATIONS 3 1 CREATIONS CREATIONS
Quick, strike a pose, and make a comment about that pose.For example, you might make a muscled arm and say "strong man."
You'll have one minute to think of as many poses and comments as you can.
(Tick, tock. Tick, tock.)
OK. Let's begin.
The seven sixth-graders gathered in a Southwest Roanoke County living room take turns standing up, posing and commenting. With the twist of an arm, the turn of a head, the bend of a waist, these kids turn into imaginary monkeys, human tunnels, Super Man, pretzels, Romeo and Juliet and baseballs.
All in the name of academics. And fun.
These kids - Zachary Burt, Jenna Frank, Sarah Payne, Sam Bell, Mike Cox, Nicky Powers and Carrie McFarland - are members of a Cave Spring Junior High Odyssey of the Mind team.
Coming up with quick and creative answers to questions like the one above is only part of what they do when they get together to practice for their district competition Saturday. More time consuming has been their work solving one of the problems presented in this year's OM competition.
OM starts every fall, with kids and adults from kindergarten through college teaming up in groups of seven. From there, they spend about five months solving a single OM problem. Not only do they have to come up with a solution, but teams have to stage it, much like a play in the theater, at their district OM competition.
OM kids don't have to be geniuses to tackle these problems. In fact, anybody can be on an OM team, if your school participates. But kids do have to possess something of a creative spirit, since judges award points to presentations that sparkle with team inventiveness.
Connie and Jenna say that back in October they got a few of their friends together to form a team, but had to ask around for others to join so they'd have seven people. "We got people we thought would be good at it," Connie says. Which means they wanted "real creative" folks.
When the team finally grouped, they were given five OM problems to choose from. They picked a dinosaur problem. Their mission was to create a story about dinosaurs. Not only did they have to make their dinosaurs - one based on a real dinosaur and one they made up, but they also had to make one of the dinosaurs perform four tasks, such as moving across the floor, swinging its tail or blinking its eye, without touching it.
On top of that, they would have to design their own backdrops, write their own script, memorize the answer and present it - in only eight minutes - before an audience of fellow OMers and judges.
All this was to be done without the help of anyone but the seven on their team. OM teams have coaches, but the coaches can give only a small amount of advice. The big decisions belong to the kids. And if they don't work, then they must try again.
When you first hear the problems OM teams have to solve, you wonder how they can be solved at all. But OM puts fun in the problem-solving process. And these kids have tapped into it.
How do they do it? Every Wednesday night this Cave Spring team practices at the home of its coach, Susan Frank. And sometimes the kids meet on Saturdays, giving up late mornings in bed or their favorite cartoons.
They share responsibility for coming up with the different parts of the answer - the ideas, the sound effects, the actions, the script, the backdrops, the dinosaur and its actions. Sometimes, they even take parts of their project home with them to complete.
More important than how this team accomplishes its OM task, though, is why they do it.
Mike, making noises on the synthesizer the team will use as part of its solution, jokes, "I'm in it to win it."
But really, these kids are in for the fun of it.
"It's fun because you get to be, like, really creative," Zach says. "I like to use my mind a lot . . . and I thought it would be a challenge." It has been a challenge, he and the rest of the group has found, but, "It's really fun."
Zach says he'd tell others to try OM, too, because "it just teaches you to be more creative in everything you do."
Jenna, who is the only one in the group who has competed on OM teams before, says she loves it for the same reasons. Not only does she enjoy thinking creatively, but she also benefits from it. Solving problems in her school work comes quicker now. And learning to work as a team is a plus, too.
"Einstein says imagination is more important than knowledge," Jenna says. "I don't really think that, but I think imagination is really important."