There are several strategies for teams to have successful Instant Challenge outcomes. Often, success has more to do with teamwork than just thinking creatively. It’s important to emphasize every Instant Challenge will have a teamwork scoring component. All teams need to practice showing-off their team work skills.

This may include but is not limited to having designated duties for different team members – timekeeper, summary person, questioner, reader, etc. With a young team, try to come up with different “roles” or jobs for each to have responsibility during the Instant Challenge. Please don’t assign these roles, but to describe them and discuss with the group who they think would be good at this role or like to try it? If more than one person, you can have TWO in a category – can’t hurt. If nobody volunteers, have them draw “roles” from slips of paper for a few times and see if they find an area they are comfortable. Or if they’ve chosen roles and it doesn’t seem to mesh, that’s the time to insist everyone try a new role.

Possible Roles and Responsibilities:

1. The Rule Person – This person reads the Instant Challenge and throughout the working time is the person who refers back to the written challenge to be sure they are solving as directed and following rules. Many an Instant Challenges has run aground when a team has an amusing presentation, but talks in a nonverbal, or touches the tape that can’t be touched, or changes the item that “can’t be changed.” The rule person keeps the focus on what is allowed.
2. The Points Person – This person makes sure the team is getting the most points possible. Example: If the challenge said 10 points for a skit and 50 points for each creative costume, the rule person would remind the team that costumes were important, point-wise. Especially if they got stuck writing a skit and forgot to dress up! –Yes, rule person and points person might seem redundant, but you WANT two kids checking the rules and paper and points throughout, so there are two slightly different roles that overlap.
3. The Timekeeper – This role can take two forms. One – The designated Timekeeper’s role is to continually ask the appraiser how much time is left in the challenge. This is generally used with younger teams where watches are harder to use. Two – This person must have a watch and must get used to checking it and telling the team when they are half-way through, or have a minute left, whatever is appropriate. You can always have two Timekeepers, each one tracking the time both ways.  REMEMBER: If you are using your own watch/device it will ALWAYS be the Appraisers timer that is the official time. Make sure there are no bells, ringers, alarms etc. armed on the device the team is using. This needs to be a verbal countdown by the team member.
   
4. The Laughmeters – Often more than one person volunteers for this, but this is a job to be sure that the skit or whatever is funny (assuming it is supposed to be funny) and suggests quirky actions, character voices, funny lines and whatever else tickles their fancy. While we tell Appraisers that “kid humor” is different than “adult humor” it’s best to remind team members that if your grandma wouldn’t find it funny…. most likely the Appraisers won’t either.
5. The Brainstorm Facilitator – This is the moderator of the group, who makes sure that everybody is participating and encourages the less-outgoing kids to speak up, and asks the babbling kids to “hold that thought” while another idea is heard. This person makes sure that there is some order to the teamwork and participation; if several people want to talk, this person identifies people in turn to speak, so that everyone gets a turn. This team member is a future diplomat!
6. The “What If?” Person – If you don’t use up all your kids with jobs above doubling up, add a “what if?” person. This person listens to the first two ideas and then says “what if…” and adds on or changes one of the ideas. Even if they don’t do this in a meet, this is great practice for thinking outside the box. There can be more than one “what if?” person. Example: Someone says the skit can be animals in a zoo. The “what if?” person says, “or what if it can be animals on a farm?” or “what if?” person says “what if it was an ANT farm?” and so on…..

Hearing:

Another factor to keep in mind is that in Instant Challenge the Appraisers must be able to hear a team’s brainstorming in order to accurately score them on team work. Remind your team not to whisper when they are brainstorming. This is not the time to pretend you’re in the library. Practice Idea: Have one of the team members try sitting away from the team while they brainstorm. Afterwards, discuss as a team if the team member sitting out could hear everything.

Time:

It’s hard for even adults to know how long 2 minutes is or how much they might get done in that length of time. Practice Idea: Using a stopwatch have the team sit in a circle, ask them to raise their hand when they think two minutes is up. Don’t call out time until everyone has raised their hand. Is it longer than you think or shorter? What about 5 minutes? Use a practice Instant Challenge and talk through what can the team can do while the clock is running.