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Listen to this episode to hear how I chose the “winners” of my science fair. Hear how we transformed their “cloud-based” presentations into traditional projects that could go on to compete at the school-wide and city-wide Science Fair. Also learn how I used this as an opportunity to teach the iterative nature of Science Inquiry and how students used what they learned in my Science Fair to improve their inquiry thinking.
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In this episode I share how I set up my Science Fair presentation day. I explain how students were organized to give their presentations and how I assessed them. I also reflect on how the presentations went and the ups and downs of the results. Finally, I describe how I conform my non-traditional Science Fair methods to the demands of the district level Science Fair.
Check out the resources below:
Assessment grid for Science Fair presentations
Student peer assessment rubric (Gdoc, PDF)
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On today’s podcast I talk about preparing students for Science Fair day. It will include how I prepare students for their oral and visual presentations, the technology we use to do it, and how our Science Fair day is different than a tradition science fair.
Hear about using Google apps to make your Science Fair tri-fold board free! Not only that, but creating cloud-based Science Fair “boards” allows students to collaborate in school and at home, virtually. In addition it allows you to give feedback right on their documents from your computer.
Check out the links below for resources to use in your classroom.
Google Presentation Instructions (Gdoc) (PDF)
Oral Presentation Instructions (Gdoc) (PDF)
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This is where the rubber meets the road. Can students determine the validity of their hypotheses? Listen to hear how I coach students in scientific thinking AND writing as they write up their conclusions to their Science Fair projects. Also hear how I guide my students to writing an Abstract which they use to summarize their entire experimental process. Also, hear how the awesome Language Arts teachers on my team interdisciplinized the Science Fair by creating an independent reading list which students used to contextualize their project in their writing. This has proven especially useful given the new emphasis on the Common Core and literacy across the curriculum.
Links:
Conclusion Directions and Rubric (Gdoc) (PDF)
Abstract Directions and Rubric (Gdoc) (PDF)
Final Paper Directions (Gdoc) (PDF)
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Science Fair is an excellent opportunity to build math skills into your Science class. In this episode, I detail how I guided students in organizing their data into presentable form. I used tutorial videos to help students develop 21st century cloud based data analysis skills. Listen to hear how students researched graph types, selected the most appropriate graph and turned it all into a document that could later be used in a final science fair report.
Video Tutorials:
Making a graph using your Google drive
Inserting a Google graph into a Google document
Instructions and Resources
Creating a Science Fair Graph (Gdoc)(PDF)
Results and Reflection Writing (Gdoc)(PDF)
Data and Results Rubric (Gdoc)(PDF)
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In this episode I continue to share my experiences with students in organizing and graphing their data. I discuss the methods for taking all their data and displaying it in a single table. In addition, I outline how students gain expertise on graph types and decide what type of graph to use for their data. Click the links below to download copies of materials I used with my students.
Creating a Science Fair Graph (Gdoc)(PDF)
Results and Reflection Writing (Gdoc)(PDF)
Data and Results Rubric (Gdoc)(PDF)
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Analyzing data always presents challenges for students. In this episode, I discuss how I approached data analysis with my students. Hear about the hangups we ran into and how the activity unfolded in my classroom.
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In Episode 8, I discuss how students concluded their data gathering by organizing their data into a meaningful data table. We also brainstormed ways to use math to help “summarize” the data. Finally, students researched types of graphs in order to choose one that best represented their data.
In addition, I took this moment in the Science Fair continuum to have students reflect on the process so far. It’s important to do this regularly because the experiment takes place over such a long period of time. It helps them to put their day to day work into the context of their overall experiment. It’s easy for them to forget the point!
Reflection and Data Organization Directions (MSWord, PDF)
Creating Graph Directions (MSWord, PDF)
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How Our Humanities Teacher Helped Make Science Fair Rock!
The awesome Lillie Marshal, 7th grade Humanities teacher joins for this episode of the podcast. She shares how she welcomed Science Fair into her classroom and curriculum and how she used it to teach research concepts. Listen to hear how to work with colleagues to “interdisciplinize” your Science Fair.
Lillie is also an incredible blogger in her own right. She publishes aroundtheworldL.com, a travel blog. She also publishes teachingtraveling.com, a travel web site for teachers.
I’m super psyched to announce the arrival of the cover for my book, “Why Science Fair Sucks and How You Can Save It.” The cover is off to the formatter and should be available on Amazon.com with in a week or two. Thank you so much to Dave Fymbo at limelightbookcovers.com for all his design work.
Interested in finding out the moment the book is for sale? Sign up for my newsletter by clicking here or fill out the form on the right side of this page.
