Flights of Fancy

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Flights of Fancy

IMC

Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines	Flights of Inspiration
The Wright Brothers	Paper Airplanes
Interview with Mae Jemison Mae Jemison is a dancer, a doctor, a teacher, an expert on African history — and an astronaut! Dr. Jemison is the first African-American woman to orbit Earth. In 1992, she blasted out of Earth's atmosphere aboard the space shuttle Endeavour, serving as the ship's medical specialist.	This unique and compelling collaborative project is designed to give students in grades 3-5 an opportunity to: display their aerodynamic and creative talents. use patterns to create two different styles of paper airplanes. determine which type of paper airplane will fly the greatest distance and stay aloft the longest time.
Informative Ken's Paper Airplanes 200 Websites Flights of Fancy Resource2 in Groups More Sites 3-D Planes Plane Project Wright Brothers	Hands On Activities Model Paper Airplanes Exploratorium Aerogami Yes Mag Fliers Airplanes and Paper Clips Paper Airplane Challenge Wright S cavenger Hunt Kool Paper Airplanes

(from Scholastic)

Amelia Earhart
(in English and Spanish)

First Flight

Women of Fame

World Book

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PROJECT IDEAS

It's time to get out the books on airplanes both fiction and informational.
Look for photographs of early attempts at flight and compare some of the factors to those discovered in the paper airplane contest.
Make a bulletin board display of some of those photographs with the title question: WILL IT FLY? Suggest that students make educated guesses based on what they now about flight and tack yes or no tags to each picture. When everyone who's interested has made a guess, let individuals explain their reasons.
Contact airlines, the FAA and other agencies that deal with aviation safety. Get and compare statistics on the safety records of various airlines. Find ways to show this information in charts or graphs.
While we're looking at flight mathematically, put together some figures about costs. How much fuel does a commercial airliner consume during a flight. How far can a given plane go on that much fuel? How much does a commercial jet cost? How much does it make in a year? How many passengers can the biggest ones take?
Get descriptive words and phrases from people who have flown. Put together a group poem on flight using some of them.
Investigate the effect on warfare of airplanes. How were they first used? What changed when airplanes became weapons of war?
Look to the debate on manned and unmanned space flight. Get a debate going on where the United States should be heading next.

Comments or Suggestions? E-mail eweiner@d112.lake.k12.il.us