When teachers become makers, magic happens!

What does it look like when a written lesson plan becomes a lived experience? We got a front row seat when Changemaker Rosemary Ziegler used Makedo’s Science of Flight lesson as the foundation for a professional development workshop. Allowing teachers to take on the role of student and letting them discover firsthand how hands-on learning can transform thinking.

The premise was simple yet powerful: show educators that interdisciplinary curricula can help students apply knowledge in real-world situations.

How it Unfolded

• Step 1: Paper Airplanes by Memory: No instructions, no tutorials, just fold and fly to see what you already know.
• Step 2: Vocabulary Resurfaces: Once planes were in the air, concepts like lift and drag were reintroduced, but now grounded in something real.
• Step 3: Cardboard Challenge: Teachers were challenged in small groups to “make a flying thing” with Makedo and cardboard and see who could keep their contraption in the air the longest.
• Step 4: Test, Iterate, Repeat: Groups reiterated designs as they tested, adding flaps, tabs, or Scrus to redistribute weight and see how it helped their plane fly.

“Honestly, for teachers, working together was the hardest part.”

There’s something revealing about putting independent professionals into a collaborative making challenge. The struggle isn’t the challenge; it’s collaboration and negotiation. Letting go of the right answer. That friction? That’s exactly how students feel, and asking teachers to experience it firsthand helps them learn how to teach through it when it happens in their classroom.

Withholding Information on Purpose

One of the most intentional choices in the workshop was holding back vocabulary and heavy concepts. Instead of front-loading all of the physics, Rosemary held back, allowing experimentation to lead the learning.

Details about wing shape, weight distribution and drag reduction weren’t explained; they were discovered through the process of creation!

This mirrors the philosophy baked into the Science of Flight lesson, which challenges students to understand the four forces of flight (lift, drag, thrust, weight), not by reading about them, but by wrestling with them in cardboard form.

Rosemary had a sign that the lesson was working.

“We could’ve spent all day on this experiment.”

Reflecting on Experience

The workshop didn’t end there. It ended with reflection, helping teachers process how the experience translates to classroom implementation and how they can encourage students to reflect on their own learning journeys. That closing is powerful. Allowing teachers to reflect on the experience leads to true meaning-making, and it’s how you can transform a fun activity into great pedagogy.

Interdisciplinary learning asks students to use knowledge, not just hold it. When science moves off the paper into something you build, test, and revise with your hands, the learning sticks. This workshop is proof that this holds true for teachers, too.

“We do not learn from experience…
we learn from reflecting on experience.”
- John Dewey

Try the Lesson

Ready to try Science of Flight with your students?