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Unit 2

Motivating Learners & Flight

Module 4

The Creative

Parent’s Toolbox

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Growth Mindset

Fixed Mindset

What you will learn

	Pedagogy	Physics Concepts
Module 1	Building a Growth Mindset	Forces
Module 2	Asking Better Questions	Motion
Module 3	Engineering Design Process	Structures
Module 4	Motivating Learners	Flight
Module 5	Gender Biases	Electricity
Module 6	Creating an Ideal Learning Environment	Power

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Persistence

grows from

Failure

The relationship between failure and persistence

Persistence and failure are related to each other -- being able to persist means being unafraid to fail

...which requires courage.

One way to develop this courage is to lower the stakes of failure. When failure is explained as a natural part of the building process or learning process, it becomes less scary.

Failure doesn’t have to mean the end of the game, or lesson -- it doesn’t have to mean that you lose everything you’ve worked for. Instead, failing at something can be a powerful lesson.

We saw this earlier in the Engineering Design Process, but because persistence is so important for success -- for everyone, not just engineers -- we want to focus this module on persistence and how to motivate learners to become more persistent.

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But I don’t want to!

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Show her that she will be successful at it
Pick a challenge that is important to her and she is excited about:

Is easy to start
Gives choices
Sets a clear goal

How can you Motivate your learner?

But we’ve got a few ideas!

Show her that she will be successful at it - Have your child think through the scenario, what she is excited about, what she may be afraid of. Have her describe what will happen if something doesn’t work. Get her prepared to face the problem when her model won’t work. Have her prepare for the case when she will have to make at least 2 or 3 models because the first one won’t work. It is important for her to realize that it is totally ok for the first model not to work.
Pick a challenge that is important to her (or she is excited about)
Its easy to start - You have done a few challenges by now and are familiar with the Curiosity Machine platform. Pick a challenge you think is easy for your child to do and have some early success
She has choice - Have her pick from a few challenges. Watch the inspiration videos with her and see which challenge she would like to do.
Set a clear goal - This is very motivating. Set a goal such as - we will do 10 projects this year or one a month. Then you can track her progress on the kitchen fridge so that the whole family can support her in her learning journey

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It's OK to fail …

Failure is just learning

what didn’t work.

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Imagine you were one of the thousands of builders who was tasked with building the Pyramids. Where would you start? How would you ever get it done? The task would be so large it would be hard to comprehend what amount of work would be necessary to finish. Yet, these pyramids were built, and so well that they still stand today, about 5,000 years later. How was such success achieved?

It's a little more manageable to understand this great task when you think of it as a collection of smaller tasks – these pyramids were built one block at a time. Each stone was cut, hauled, lifted, and set one by one.

What is the lesson here?

Reduce the size of the task

By breaking tasks into manageable steps, children will only temporarily experience failure before continuing on with the learning experience.

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Failure should be common -- but temporary

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Flight

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Before building, observe.

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Wings Enable Flight

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There are 4 forces involved in Flight

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Let’s talk about Lift

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Creating lift creates flight

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How can you show Lift?

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Here's another demo you can do!

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Longer, thinner wings are better for gliding

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There are four forces involved in flight

Gravity, Lift, Thrust, and Drag�

For something to fly it needs to be balanced�
Wing shape is important for different types of flight

Let’s review!

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Congratulations!

You just finished

the fourth module!

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Let’s invent!