Missions

How Take Flight missions work

The Take Flight program is divided into 6 missions. Each mission includes 3-4 challenges and take roughly 2-3 weeks to complete. They are designed for a seamless curriculum integration, and you can always adapt it to your students' needs and available time. 

Before Getting Started

Forms for our Study Participants

If you are using the Take Flight curriculum please complete a teacher pre and post survey. All other forms you need are included in the following link too.

Dive into the Missions

This first mission provides experiences to reveal communal goals in group activities and enable students to identify and name those goals. Students learn about the under-representation of women in the STEM fields and are asked to think about why that might be. 

Students form three-person flight crews and open their drone kits.  Flight crews create protocols and checklists for managing equipment, keeping the batteries charged, and storing the equipment safely.  The mission culminates in the flight crews' first drone flights.

This mission focuses on developing flight skills: piloting, camera operations, and safety observations. Flight crews identify and practice collaborative skills as they build those flight skills. Students also learn the basics of airspace and federal regulations for drone operations.

Mission 4 introduces students to autonomous flight of drones.  Flight crews will use computer software to send flight pattern instructions to a programmable drone so it will fly that pattern by itself. 

Students explore the array of drone careers, the aviation industry, and STEM careers more generally.  Flight crews continue to refine their flight skills, develop their awareness, and collaborative skills.

As a culmination of the Take Flight journey, students will review what they have done in the five previous missions by preparing a presentation and getting other students excited about STEM and its careers.

Here's what teachers say about Take Flight!

Teacher quote 1: "They are starting to think about what they might do later in life, it's never too early".
Teacher quote 2: "The career videos are great, the kids actually pay attention, I couldn’t believe it.""
Teacher quote 3: - [x] “A lot of them are familiar with what drones can do but the video showed them they can participate in that world if they want to, especially the girls.”