Yesterday was “All School Test Day” at Lincoln Lutheran. It’s a bit of a misnomer. The 8th – 11th graders take tests, the 12th graders have a retreat, the 6th graders have a normal day of school and the 7th graders do whatever I think up for them to do.
For the past 8 years I’ve taught them how to play chess, but over the years that has gone from a full day to a half day, to this year, when we would only have 140 minutes. So we had to do something else.
We did a little ‘airplane building company’ simulation. Everyone started out with $200 and they could buy paper (a quarter sheet was $100), paperclips ($50 small and $100 large) , tape ($50 per inch) and a variety of other items. Then they built their plane, tested it in the hallway and brought it to the gym to fly it.
At the gym they could fly it for distance (each yard got them $100) or for hang time (each second earned them $100). They could only fly each plane once, so after they earned some money it was back to the store to buy more supplies. Lather, Rinse and Repeat as needed and soon you’d have enough money to buy a full size piece of paper ($700), a pair of scissors ($1000) or the plans to make a different sort of airplane ($400 – $2,400).
Everyone seemed to enjoy it, and the top 6 companies got prizes. We had two groups this year and we split them by gender. We’ve never done that before, and it seemed to work really well. There was also a prize for the Most Artistic planes. When the boys group was up, there were 3 entries; the girls had 20 entries.
I was a little surprised that the girls liked it so much, but Lauren pointed out that there was shopping involved.
Update: Here are the files:
- Handout and Balance Sheet (.docx)
- Signs (.docx)