CVUSD / Friday, April 23, 2021
Two Colina Middle School Teams Advance to the Odyssey of the Mind World Championships
Creativity, teamwork and problem solving to foster original and divergent thinking is at the center of the Odyssey of the Mind program. Teams of students from schools across the Conejo participated in the SoCal Odyssey of the Mind program this year with “The Odd Squad” team from Colina Middle School named State Champions for coming in first in their respective problem on Monday, April 19th. A second Colina team named “Fire Breathing Rubber Duckies” came in second place overall in their problem/division. Both of the Colina teams will move on to participate in the Odyssey of the Mind World Championships – an incredible accomplishment!
“The Odd Squad” team consists of: Volunteer Coach: Kim Collins and team members: Mason (Colina 8th Grade), Mary (Colina 8th), Jonah (Colina 8th), Grace (Colina 8th), and Caitlin (Colina 6th). In the Odyssey of the Mind competition students are challenged with a problem that gives them a budget of only $100 and requires them to create a solution without adult involvement other than guidance from their Coach. For the problem they placed first in, the team built a life size, interactive pop-up book to tell a story about a child that traveled through it to meet some of their favorite storybook characters. Featured stories included Where the Wild Things Are and Bamboo and The Turtle. The team utilized tremendous creativity and teamwork.
For their portion of the competition, the “Fire Breathing Rubber Duckies” team, comprised of 8th grade Colina students Liv, Nyla, Alex, Bijan and Chris with Volunteer Coach Nicole Kolde, created a performance where a character unknowingly enters into a VR world who then has to play a game where they travel through time and collect art pieces in order to get back to the real world. The VR world is called Art Through the Lense and celebrates many different forms of art. The kids created costumes, props and set pieces using many different art mediums, with a strong focus on using recycled materials. The presentation also included several technical effects that they were judged on. Everything from writing the script to figuring out how to film remotely during covid was done entirely by the team with no outside assistance. The competition has two parts, the performance mentioned above that takes teams several months to work on and the “Spontaneous Problem” which is done in 20 minutes. The student team members are given a problem to solve “on the fly” where the team provides verbal or hands on answers and the most creative answers/solutions receive the highest points.
The Odyssey World competition is the next step and will take place in Orlando, Florida on June 11th and 12th, with the option for teams to participate virtually. Please join us in wishing these teams great success at the World competition!
Please also join us in congratulating all of the teams of CVUSD students that completed in the Odyssey of the Mind program this year, including:
- Lang Ranch Elementary who placed in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th places at States
- Wildwood Elementary who placed in 2nd in their category at States
