Workshops help teachers incorporate aviation in lessons

ITD’s Division of Aeronautics will sponsor three two-day Teacher Aviation Workshops next month, demonstrating how aviation subjects can be incorporated into regular classroom lessons. Three workshops are planned: Bird Aviation Museum, Sandpoint, July 14-15; Idaho Falls, July 25-26; and Caldwell, July 28-29. Although the workshops are intended primarily for teachers of grades 6-12, the lessons are appropriate for all grades.

"Teachers who are looking for unique ideas to teach mathematics and science, and integrating reading, social studies and technology, will find the workshops especially beneficial,” said Frank Lester, safety/education coordinator for the Division of Aeronautics. “These exciting, fun-filled, hands-on workshops will include ideas about incorporating aviation activities into the curriculum and will demonstrate the role aviation plays in everyday activities.”

Using official aeronautical charts, easy-to-make-plotters and other low cost items, participants use classroom-ready lessons.

“All activities are aligned with current Idaho state academic standards and are very relevant to the ISAT,” Lester added.

The workshops will explore:

  • Flight planning with compass directions and latitude and longitude map operations;
  • Practical applications of geometrical formulas used in search and rescue as well as runway construction projects;
  • Negative and positive integers through the use of time zones;
  • How paper airplanes can be used to teach scientific principles of flight as well as basic statistics such as the mean, median, and mode;
  • Tracking down a UFO using a mathematical table;
  • Discovering what secrets are contained within Area 51;
  • Aviation literature combined with legends and myths;
  • How motion pictures reinforce learning concepts;
  • How the aviation Internet affects education.

College credit is available after completion of the two-day workshop.

Registrations are limited to a maximum of 26 per workshop, but ample room remains at each site. For more information about the workshops or the registration process, contact Frank Lester (frank.lester@itd.idaho.gov) or Tammy Schoen (tammy.schoen@itd.idaho.gov) by e-mail or telephone at (208) 334-8775.

Published 6-10-2011