As teachers, it is important to find
activities that can incorporate many subjects while still being interesting for
students. This can sound like a daunting task. Add in end of quarter
activities, grading, and holidays, and some people just throw their hands up in
the air. This happens, in a real teachers life. But, rather than give up, our
amazing fifth grade teacher at our school dove into a great parachute project
from Pitsco that was cross-disciplinary, good science, and just plain fun for
the kids.
A
few weeks ago our fifth grade teacher was faced with end of quarter activities
and holidays all in rush. To help her, I gave her this great activity from
Pistco on parachutes. It was bright, colorful, hands-on, and had lots of extension activities that could be
done. She took her two fifth grade science classes and spent a few days
creating then testing the parachutes. The science
classes loved creating the parachutes. They were able to follow the specific
directions and needed very little assistance. This is a big win not only for an
elementary school teacher but also is also useful for planning for middle
school classrooms and high school classrooms that are really large.
One student
in the fifth grade came up with idea to trade some of his colored tissue for
another color, thus he made a two tone chute rather than just one color. A
great extension activity would be to incorporate art concepts and talk about
color wheels. with more time teachers could also research into weather
balloons, hot air balloons, or the principals of flight. While making the
parachutes, the strings were cut different lengths so that students got to
compare different sized parachutes. They could run tests comparing the
efficiency of the sizes of strings or also payloads.
For the
fifth graders, launching the chutes was the most fun. They got to outside and
play while also testing the different principles of flight. This was an excellent lesson that helped
finish their unit about weather. Also, it fit in nicely with the Next
Generation Inquiry Standards. Students were doing hands-on inquiry in an
exciting way. Students worked on problem solving and application of design
principles.
As a honesty note, Pitsco sent me the parachute activity for free. Its a good activity that I think anyone could do in their class.
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