We've found that kids get much more out of these visits if the teachers do some preparatory work, explaining what the Wright brothers did and the overall importance of their work. To assist you in this task, we've adapted a lesson plan on the Wrights that was prepared by the Civil Air Patrol and is offered through the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). You can download both the lesson plan and the student activity booklet by right- clicking on the thumbnails to the right. Choose "Save Target As" (in Explorer) or "Save Link As" (in Navigator) from the pop-up menu that appears. Save the ZIP file to a folder on your hard drive. These are large files,  so they may take a while to download. They each unzip into a MicroSoft Word .doc file. Print them out, then choose the information and the activities you would like to cover with your class. Note: For additional ideas on curriculum, visit the Franklin Institute's  "Teacher's Zone," where they have gathered an astounding array of aviation education materials, sources, and links from both the United States and Britain. Here's the link: http://www.fi.edu/flights/teacher/index.html

When we come to your school, you can expect us to emphasize these parts of the Wright story: 

Right-click on the image to download a zipped file for the Activities Book. This file is about 6 megs.

• The Wright Brothers did not invent the airplane, they invented a revolutionary system to control an airplane. The idea of an airplane was old as the hills, but they made it work.
• The Wright Brothers worked at a time when science first began to affect ordinary people's lives in a powerful way. In 1903, when they made their first powered flight, Henry Ford made the first Model T automobile. Thomas Edison (inventor of the light bulb), Alexander Graham Bell (inventor of the telephone), and Albert Einstein (whose work led to the atomic bomb) also worked during this period.
• The airplane affects our lives by bringing people and ideas closer together. Today, you can take commercial airlines around the world in a few days. Some military jets can fly around the world in less than a day. And the Space Shuttle orbits the earth in less than an hour.

"They invented a control system that made it work."

• An airplane flies because the pressure of the air on the wings lifts it off the ground, similar to the way the wind lifts a kite.
• Once an airplane is in the air, a pilot has to balance to keep it upright and pointed in the direction he wants to go -- "Pointy end forward and dirty side down," as the saying goes.
• The Wright Brothers invented control surfaces that enable a pilot to balance an aircraft -- movable wings to roll an aircraft from side to side, an elevator to pitch and aircraft up an down, and a rudder to yaw the nose right an left. Every aircraft flying today still has roll, pitch, and yaw controls.

"Pointy end forward; dirty side down."

• The Wright Brothers didn't just have an idea and they went out and built an airplane that flew. They worked for seven years from 1899 to 1905 before they finally had an aircraft that flew well. During that time, they had many failures - and many crashes. But they kept going.
• The Wrights found it easier to keep going because they had the support of their family. Their father, Bishop Milton Wright, always encouraged his children to explore their world. He was proud of what he sons were doing, even when other people told him it was foolish and dangerous.
• The Wright Brothers weren't daredevils. Their flights were very dangerous, but they tried to reduce the risk by starting with short, brief flights and gradually flying farther and longer. The best test pilots today still follow their example.

This web site, first-to-fly.com, is the largest single source of information on the Wright Brothers on the Internet. It's unique "layered" presentation allows a student to dive into any topic as briefly or as thoroughly as their interest dictates. Our special hands-on section, Will and Orv's Workshop, provides plans and instructions for building some of the simple flying machines that we bring to your school, such as the 1878 Wright Bat or a 2/3-scale model of the 1899 Wright Kite. We're currently working on a flying model of the 1902 Wright Glider that kids can make from scraps of Styrofoam. And we're preparing a long list of reading materials, instructions for how to use interlibrary loan (to obtain books that aren't in their local library), aviation museums, and links to other early aviation web sites.

We'll make sure that each student has a map of our site before we leave your school. And we'll leave your school library a "disk-based web" -- our web site on a CD-Rom -- so students without computers at home can still access our information.