Fly to the Line Glider Challenge

Four children from Year 5 (Freddie N, Eddie E, Sam N and William B) attended the Regional ‘Fly to the Line Glider Challenge’ at RAF Cranwell on Thursday.

The Glider Challenge offers primary schools a unique opportunity to begin to engage students in Years 4 and 5 with STEM subjects.

The competition’s aim, which is sponsored by the RAF Museum at Cosford and The Learning Partnership, is to engage as many young people as possible with an authentic Science and Engineering challenge. The competition is designed to help equip students with the skills, knowledge and experience that they will need to embrace and tackle the global opportunities and challenges of tomorrow.  

The Year 5 children had to plan, design and work together as a team to create a glider. These were designed at school and the best team went forward to the regional finals. They had to develop their ideas in the content areas below to design, build and test gliders through the Spring and early Summer term.

At the regional finals, the students had the opportunity to learn more about flight and design and compete with new glider designs they made there.

The children planned, made the glider, tested and refined as they went along. They also had the opportunity to fly a hawk in the simulator, look at a real hawk and research in the museum. Our team of four worked hard as a team and successfully completed a super glider, which during the practice runs flew beautifully and was well balanced and able to fly a distance of about 17 meters. 

Unfortunately, for us our glider suffered serious damage in the test flight and consequently the nose cone split needing glue to fix it. With only ten minutes to go to the glider competition flight it never regained the super flight it had produced earlier in the morning. The boys, although disappointed about this, were a credit to the School and were proud of their achievements and cheered on the other teams. Scores were taken of the two competition flights and added together.

As we had two successful flights with a decent score we came a commendable fourth in the competition. However, sadly only the top three teams went through to the national final. So close, but a lovely day had by all.