Mrs. Hicks
Grade 2
Blanchard Elementary School
Cape Giradeau, Missouri

Our class has been studying about weather. When we learned about wind is the movement of air, we realized that wind is very important to flight. So we decided to find out more about how things fly. 

We read the story, Wilbur and Orville and the Flying Machine, by Max Marquardt. It was interesting to find out that Wilbur and Orville became interested in flying because of a toy their father gave them. So we read more about Wilbur and Orville in excerpts from the following sources:

• The Mini Page: Orville and Wilbur Wright by Betty Debnam Issue October 7, 2003 (http://www.uexpress.com/minipage/contact.html)
• Wilbur and Orville Wright by Louis Sabin
• The World's Greatest Inventors by Sarah Leslie
• The Wright Brothers by Russell Freedman

We tested our knowledge of the history of the Wright Brothers by using this fact or fiction quiz on Kidspiration: (Click to download file)

We then decided to become flight testers ourselves and created straw planes.

We made and then tested our planes:

We recorded data and changed the distance between the wings to test for distance flown:

Then we published our data using the Paint program.

Here's a sample of two published reports:

We learned a lot about flight and how things move through air just from our little straw planes. Thanks to Wilbur and Orville Wright, we now know much more!