As we began our first Science unit in quarter one, we prepared heavily for our very anticipated first experiment for the year. The time finally came where we got to begin this process!
Students worked so hard on the Scientific Inquiry Steps and the whole process of asking a question, forming a hypothesis, then getting to the more fun parts. Since we were learning about variables and models in lesson 1 as well it was only fitting to use these two things in this first experiment.
For this experiment students made model airplanes. They asked the question “What changes can I make to my model to make it fly farther?”. Students then made their hypothesis and got to fly their planes. While measuring with the unit of Meters seemed new to most students, flying a paper air plane did not :)
Students then got to make alterations and changes to their planes based on their predictions and got to fly them again. When we came back together as a class students had many different results. We grouped things by the one variable they decided to change and found out that changing the weight and wing size were both things that helped model airplanes fly farther! Check out some of the pictures from this process…
