I spy something that flies

Before you begin

Planning and setting up this activity 

• To earn the Air Spotter Activity Badge, participants must correctly identify 38 out of 50 aircraft.
• For Air Activities Stage 1, only four need to be identified.
• The Aircraft Recognition List features 50 images, including a mix of cargo, passenger, and military planes—some historic, some still in use.
• Display the images by either printing two copies of each, cutting them out, and grouping them in sets of 10 around the room, or by projecting them from a computer to save paper and ink.
• You could use extra paper to create a score table with space to track each team and their progress in identifying all 50 aircraft.

Running this activity

1. Explain that everyone will be looking at some images of aircraft and testing their knowledge of the features that help identify them.
2. Allow 10 minutes for everyone to go around and have a look at the images.
   • Tell them they should focus on key features that might help with identifying. 
   • Ask them to share something they recognised or something new they saw.
   • Discuss the different types of aircraft, what they’re used for, and what cargo they might carry.
   • Remind everyone that if they know any names of the aircraft, they should not to say them out loud at this stage.
3. Split into five groups and give each group 10 images to examine together.
4. Their task is to categorise the 10 aircraft into one of the following groups:
   • Combat Aircraft: Typically smaller, with distinct weapon systems or military features.
   • Large Military Aircraft: Big planes, often with large cargo areas or troop capacity.
   • Light and Executive Aircraft: Smaller planes, often private jets or light aircraft.
   • Helicopters: Aircraft with rotor blades, not wings.
   • Airliners: Commercial passenger planes.
   • Heritage Aircraft: Older, vintage, or historical planes.
5. While categorising, encourage groups to look for and discuss the key features of each aircraft to help with classification:
   • Wing Shape
   • Nose Shape
   • Colour 
   • Markings 
   • Engine Type/Size 
   • Propellers/Rotor Blades
   • Relative Size 
   • Any other interesting features they notice
6. Now, have one person from each group sit at a different table, to form five new teams
7. Gather the aircraft images or project them somewhere visible to everyone.
8. Explain that you’ll be showing one image at a time, and each group will have one minute per image to write down its name. Groups should use their aircraft list for reference.
9. Begin showing the pictures in the order they’re shown on the answer sheet. After 1 minute, when everyone’s ready, they should hold their answer up.
10. Encourage everyone to work closely together to make sure everyone’s included. Remember, the more brains, the better!
11. For each round, record the scores for each team and aircraft on the score table. Continue until all 50 images have been shown.
12. While scores are being tallied, redistribute the aircraft images to the groups. Ask each group to reflect on their answers by comparing them to the pictures they just saw:
    
    • Did any of their answers surprise them?
    • What features led them to pick the names they did?
    • Were there any aircraft they misidentified, and what made them reconsider?
13. Finally, reveal the results of the image identification quiz and celebrate everyone's efforts!