Herbert Binns and His Flying Tricycle

Objectives:

  1. To demonstrate the principle of flight in original-flier designs.
  2. To measure the distance fliers travel.
  3. To discover what happens when a design is changed.

Materials:

  • Paper (various weights and sizes), pencils, crayons, stars, tape, paper clips, rubber bands, and scissors, paper clips (same size), meter tapes (one per team)

    Procedures:

    1. Read Castle and Weever's Herbert Binns and the Flying Tricycle. Discuss how Herbert solved his problem. Have the children dictate their own flying adventures to you. Write a class story.
    2. Present the problem-solving situation: "Your job is to make something that will fly. Try to make your fliers go far by making it like real fliers."
    3. Children sketch their designs in the folios (record-keeping logs).
    4. Display materials on a table. Children work in teams of two. Teams choose from materials available to design the best fliers.
    5. Children "test run" their fliers. Allow teams to fly indoors. Teams measure the distance their fliers traveled using a meter stick (e.g., 1,2,3.. sticks). Record results of at least three trial runs on a class bar graph.
    6. Ask: "How far did your fliers go?" Have teams point to the class graph to share their results. Ask: "How can you change your flier to get it to go farther?" (Add paper clip weights or cut off the nose.) Teams make modifications.
    7. Try fliers indoors. Then fly outdoors. Teams measure, graph results, and compare with indoor distances. Ask: "Did fliers go farther indoors or outdoors? What things changed the results?"

    Evaluation

    1. Check student designs in folios to determine if sketches demonstrate flight principles.
    2. Assess student input to class bar graph and abilities to interpret data.
    3. Rate student presentations to the class and their in-class participation.

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