Failure: The Good and the Bad
WHY? question_guy
In science, math and exploration failure in an important component. Many students are afraid of failure. It is important for students to realize that many important successes were preceded by failures. Some successes would not have been at all possible if it had not been for a mistake made earlier. The path that a scientist, explorer or mathematician took may have been changed by a mistake making a new success possible.

This activity allows students to:
  • Cooperate and use teamwork.
  • Use creative ways to illustrate an idea.
  • Use creative thinking, deductive reasoning to new idea.
  • Learn new ways of thinking about failure.

ASSESSMENT: Can the student communicate what they observed?

question_guy
two Student is able to communicate that failure is not a bad thing and that it can lead to new and creative ways to think about how to make something successful as some pioneers in the history of flight have done. They can name one or two people in the history of flight who made successes out of previously tried mistakes.

two Student is able to communicate that failure is not a bad thing and that it can lead to new and creative ways to think about how to make something successful.

two Student is able to communicate that failure is not a bad thing and that a person can make something good by correcting a mistake.

two Student is able to communicate that failure is not a bad thing.

EXTENSIONS:

1. Make a collage showing some people who had failures and made successes from their failures in the history of flight.

2. Make a time line showing people who contributed to the successes in the history of flight. Show one failure they encountered before their success.

3. Make a class book about failure and success in the history of flight.

4. Write a news story about successes and failures of people involved in the history of flight.

5. Have the small groups prepare a short skit about some people in the history of flight and about how they overcame their obstacles, mistakes, failures to eventually achieve success.

6. Construct a memory photo album of a person overcoming obstacles related to their achievements in flight.

7. Write a letter to someone in the history of flight about their failure and encourage them to continue on with their work.

8. Pretend you are one of those people in the history of flight. Write a letter to your father or mother or to someone close describing your progress and how your feel about it.

9. Pretend you are one of the people in the history of flight and write an editorial to a newspaper defending your failure or defending an article that says flying is useless.

10. Use a Venn Diagram comparing and contrasting successes and failures of two people in the history of flight.

11. Write an advertisement announcing an attempt at flight either successful or not that you know about from a history of flight.

12. Draw and/or write a comic strip depicting a success or failure of a piece of the history of flight.

13. Pretend you are one of the pioneers from the history of flight and write an autobiography.

14. Write an article convincing people that your way of flying is a successful, safe way to travel. (balloons, helicopters, planes, etc.)


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Last modified: Sun Aug 10 18:00:59 PDT 1997

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