TECHNICAL: Daring Escape
The Technical Challenge prompts students to complete tasks by using engineering, research, strategic planning, and related skills.
A perilous situation! A daring escape! And 2 amazing devices that will overcome hazards! All of this awaits your team in this season’s Technical Challenge!
- Design and build 2 devices that use technical methods to overcome hazards.
- Create and present a story about a daring escape from a hazardous situation.
- Include a feat of skill that helps in the daring escape.
- Create and present two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.
SCIENTIFIC: Up Close
Our Scientific Challenge blends the curiosity of scientific research with the creative expression of performance art.
Get ready to think small! In this season’s Scientific Challenge, your team will dive into a microworld where characters will encounter a mysterious object. What mysteries will be revealed?
- Research the science of microscopy.
- Create and present a story about a character who encounters a mysterious object while in a microworld.
- Design and build scenery that brings the microworld to life.
- Design and create a visual effect that enhances the mysterious object.
- Create and present two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.
FINE ARTS: Tricky Tales
Our Fine Arts Challenge helps students develop acting and creative skills through artistic media, theater arts, script writing, and prop design.
All is not what it seems…tricks and illusions abound in this season’s Fine Arts Challenge! Your team will tell a tale of a trickster overcoming a tricky situation.
- Research trickster characters and how they have been portrayed in literature, theater, film, and/or mythology.
- Create and present a story about a trickster who attempts to overcome a tricky situation.
- Design and create a costume that goes through a costume transformation.
- Design and create an illusion that enhances the story.
- Create and present two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.
IMPROVISATIONAL: Festival Frenzy
Our Improvisational Challenge is all about research, spontaneity, and storytelling. Teams receive topics and quickly produce skits.
It’s time to celebrate! Your team will explore festivals and tell a story in two acts. What will happen on the road to adventure? Find out in this season’s Improvisational Challenge!
- Research festivals from around the world.
- Create and present a two-act improvisational skit about a goal a character is trying to achieve at a festival.
- Choose between 2 options to help the character to attempt to achieve the goal.
- Enhance the skit with a set of boxes.
ENGINEERING: Roll With It
Our Engineering Challenge asks students to explore and apply engineering skills and tools to design and build solutions to specific applications.
Let’s get rolling! Your team will create a structure that can roll down a ramp before holding as much weight as possible. This season’s Engineering Challenge will be your chance to show how a legend is made.
- Design and build a structure that can roll down a ramp and collide with the structure tester.
- Test the structure by placing weights on it.
- Create and present a story about how a character becomes a legend.
- Design and build a rotating object.
- Create and present two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.
SERVICE LEARNING: For the Future
Our Service Learning Challenge is designed to engage students in public service that addresses real-life community issues.
Dive into the world of science fiction as you flash forward to the future to show the impact of the amazing project your team designed to meet a community need. What does the future hold in this season’s Service Learning Challenge?
- Identify, design, carry out, and evaluate a project that addresses a need in a real community.
- Research science fiction as it has been used in literature, film, art, and/or other media.
- Create and present a science fiction story.
- Design and build a message transmitter.
- Create and present two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.
EARLY LEARNING / RISING STARS®: Monster Manners
Our Rising Stars for Early Learners Challenge offers simple experiences with the creative process, and it gives young kids (preschool through 2nd grade) a place to work together and make new friends.
You are cordially invited to join us for this season’s Rising Stars Challenge! Your team will practice using good manners and tell a story about a family of monsters moving into a new home.
- Create and present a play about a family of monsters who are moving into a new home.
- Show how the monsters use manners to fix an important item that gets broken during the move.
- Include a model of the monster family’s new home.
- Create costumes, props, and scenery to help tell the story.
INSTANT CHALLENGE
All teams will have the opportunity to solve an Instant Challenge. These challenges require teams to engage in quick, creative and critical thinking.
In a world with growing cultural connections, increased levels and types of communication, and a new need for real-time teamwork and problem-solving, the ability to solve problems quickly is becoming increasingly critical.
- Each team will be asked to solve an Instant Challenge for their DI tournament. The team must think on their feet by applying appropriate skills to produce a solution in a short period of time.
- Instant Challenges are performance-based, task-based, or a combination of the two. Although each Instant Challenge has different requirements, all Instant Challenges reward teams for their teamwork. Instant Challenges are kept confidential until it is time for teams to solve them.
