How Far Will a Paper Airplane Fly?

I'm not exactly sure how the topic of paper airplanes came up, but when it did my students wanted to know if there was a Wonder about them.  I told them there was, and we would visit the Wonder on a nice, warm fall day.  That day finally came last Wednesday.  For a Wonder Wednesday activity, we read Wonder #626 How Far Can a Paper Airplane Fly?, used the Try it out! section to make our own symmetrical airplanes, wondered about our airplanes before flying them, wrote and shared some learning, and finally wrote and shared some wonders we had when after we finished flying our airplanes.

Although last Wednesday was a beautiful fall day, it was also very windy.  This didn't lend itself to flying paper airplanes.  Funny enough before going outside to fly our airplanes, many students thought and predicted the wind would assist in the flying of the airplanes  The children soon found out that the wind caused their airplanes to do all sorts of crazy things.

This was a great learning opportunity to review symmetry, predict or wonder about what was going to happen, test out their wonders and then share their learning.

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