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Toronto starts Destination Imagination

TORONTO — The city school district is planning to begin a Destination Imagination program where pupils and students learn to work together creatively and compete against other school districts.

The program, approved by the school board earlier in the month, will begin shortly, according to Melissa Brown, fourth-grade teacher and program coordinator.

“(Destination Imagination) is a competition that presents team and instant challenges,” said Brown, adding the idea is to get pupils and students working as a team and thinking outside the box. “They will be using a high level of creative thinking.

“We have four levels,” Brown continued. “The first is Rising Stars.”

Rising Stars consists of kindergarten to second-grade pupils performing an assigned task in a non-competitive format, Brown said.

“We also have third- through fifth-graders,” she said, adding at that level pupils design projects for competition. “That’s known as the elementary level.”

The last level includes high school students from ninth- to 12th-graders grouped into teams of no more than seven, said Brown.

“Rising Stars are assigned a challenge,” said, Brown, adding all other levels will compete. “(Destination Imagination) is national. If a team wins, they move up to the state tournament. From there, if the team wins the state championship they go to global competition at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tenn.”

Brown said pupils and students are challenged to use their skills in technical, improvisation, engineering, project outreach, fine arts and scientific subsets for their project. Teams usually develop a plot and short skit around their project during competition, she added.

“Each challenge has guidelines (pupils and students) must follow,” said Brown, adding involved pupils and students must set a project budget and are encouraged to use recycled materials. “They use as much creativity as they can for their own work.”

During competition, students and pupils also are faced with an “instant challenge,” said Brown, adding students “don’t know what their instant challenge will be. They are given specific challenges, and the winner is determined by both challenges combined. In October we are going to have a parent meeting (about Destination Imagination). We’ll be forming our teams in November.”

Brown also thanked the district school board and administration for assisting in the program’s creation. For information, call (740) 537-2477.

(Miller can be contacted at mmiller@heraldstaronline.com.)

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