What I love about the middle school class is their willingness to dive into something new and challenging. We brought some instructions for complicated paper airplanes (some of them even I couldn’t figure out!). Olly gave a quick lesson on aerodynamics, and we gave each group 4 origami paper airplane options. I urged them to be creative, and show me their own method if they had one. Olly & I had brought neon paper to make it even more fun for them. I went through some of the harder tutorials with them, and talked about what might work and why.
With the promise that we’d all be calm and quiet, the students and I went out to the hallway to test our planes. We divided them into 2 groups: boys vs. girls. I told them whoever had the farthest traveling plane would win a special privilege for next week.
David won! I asked him to explain to the class why his airplane went the farthest, and he talked about the way the weight of his paper drove it forward and the fold of the wings kept it in flight. His privilege was that he got to pick the theme for next week’s lesson! He requested a Fortnight project….so I’ll have to get to work studying up on Fortnight.