Kites

Week 1: Baby's First Kite

Day 1: I gave pairs of students a pre made kite and had them build and fly it.

Day 2: The pairs modified their kites or made a new one after finding plans online. Some flew

Day 3/4: Students finished testing their kite designs and individually wrote about things they learned while making their kites. 

Week 2: Getting Serious

This week I gave the class sturdier but heavier plastic to use for their kites. They drew diagrams of their plans which went through critique rounds before they began building.

The shop at the end of a build day. Great to see these coming together.

Week 3 and 4: Actually Kites

This week was spent making final drafts of kites. We walked down to the bay before a big storm on the last day and got to test out the kites against some real winds.

Week 5: Gliders!

Starting this week we are in Phase 2 of the project. On the first day of class I gave everyone a 50 cent toy glider to play with and measure. Then we hacked them to try and improve their performance by adding better wings, stabilizers, etc. Finally we ended the week by building gliders from scratch and writing about what we learned.

Graveyard of hacked gliders.

More dead gliders.

Week 6: Balsa Glider Experiments

This week everyone used what they learned by hacking gliders to make their own gliders from scratch. Using their best hacked gliders as guides they created gliders from balsa wood and foam.

Week 7-8: Team Glider Designs and Flight

These weeks culminated in a visit to the gymnasium where we could measure the flight characteristics of the gliders the class had made. The students graphed the performance of their gliders in math class.