The Wright Brothers

Objectives:

• Students will be able to recall details about the lives of Wilbur and Orville Wright and the invention and flight of their flying machines and airplanes.

• Students will be able to recall terms related to flight.

Suggested Grades:

3rd Grade - 4th Grade - 5th Grade - 6th Grade

Lesson Procedure:

Print the reading comprehension passage and questions (see below).

Students should read the passage silently, then answer the questions. Teachers may also use the text as part of a classroom lesson plan.

Lesson Excerpt:

American brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright loved machines. Wilbur was born in 1867 and Orville was born four years later in 1871. They went to high school in Dayton, Ohio, though neither of them graduated. Wilbur and Orville taught themselves mathematics and engineering, and in 1892, they opened the Wright Cycle Company, a shop in which they designed, built and sold bicycles for about ten years.
The brothers were interested in the work of a man named Otto Lilienthal, who had designed gliders in Germany. The Wright Brothers began to think that they could build a flying machine themselves, and theirs would have a motor. In the late 1890's, Orville and Wilbur began to experiment with controlling the direction of objects in flight.

Continued...