Paper Airplanes Galore!

With 5th grade they need to learn Excel and create a spreadsheet. I wanted to think of an engaging way in which they could do this. I thought it would be fun for them to design and create 3 different paper airplanes. I had a website they could go to that showed different types or they could come up with some ideas of their own. We will then be taking the planes outdoors and flying them, tracking their distance. The students will chart and graph the distances, coming up with the "average" distance for each plane design. I also considered this a STEM challenge because of the "design" part of the airplanes. It was really cool to see some of the students modifying the designs from the website or coming up with their own designs. They are really excited to test out their designs! I will share the results in another post!