Paper Airplanes

The first days of school are a critical time.  Everyone is excited to see their friends, to meet new teachers, and find out what they will be learning about.  Several years ago, after reading a book on teaching research skills, I began our first couple of lessons in Science class with my upper elementary students by making paper airplanes.  Not only did they enjoy making and flying their planes, but we also got to introduce several important science ideas.

The first challenge was to learn as much as possible about paper airplanes during exploration time.  As expected, there were many different designs, much sharing of ideas, and much discussion about what worked best.  The results also varied widely from some fairly long flights to some quick crashes. Then questions began to emerge about the goals.  Was it only about how far a plane could fly that was important?  What about the ability to do loops or corkscrews?  We simply reiterated that their goal was “to learn as much as possible about paper airplanes”.  This was to keep the class from simply turning into a distance contest and about “who” was better. 

What everyone clearly saw was that some designs flew better than others, which of course, was one of my goals.  Three girls came up with the idea of trading their planes, with each testing the planes of the other two.  That way, they reasoned, they could get a better idea about the design of the plane separate from which of them was better at throwing a plane.  I had not expected them to figure out a method for controlling variables this early in the process, but we brought that into our closing discussion.

In our next session, the goal was changed to find a way to modify your plane so as to increase the time aloft, as measured by a stopwatch.  Again, I wanted to focus them on improving their own plane, rather than on beating someone else.  Pure competitions can have value at times, but in these early days of class I want their emphasis to be on what Carol Dweck calls a “growth mindset.”

These lessons had four goals, OK five goals.  The first was to introduce a couple of more complex ideas in a fun and accessible way.  The second was to vividly illustrate that design makes a difference; one set of folds ends up turfing your plane pretty quickly, while another set of folds yields a long smooth flight.  Developing skill in design thinking is also a big goal of the year. Thirdly, as in most all design projects, sharing and collaboration produces better results than simply going it alone.  The penultimate goal is to introduce the concept of variables; anything done to modify the plane or how energy is imparted to the plane is a variable.  Finally, the addition of the stopwatch purposefully presented the importance of measurement.

This year, learning how to design controlled experiments is a major instructional goal. We will follow these lessons on planes with a module on pendulums and one on catapults, which culminates with designing and building their own in our tinkering space.