Overview
Each year, we Science teachers endeavor to teach our students the Scientific Method by assigning a Science Fair project. We imagine that students will gravitate toward a topic that interests them and really delve into the process of science to unlock new discovery. We want students to engage in the process of science and use it to generate evidence to prove hypotheses. However, it never works out that way. Science Fair becomes a fiasco in which both we and our students spend huge amounts of time and very little learning actually occurs. Year after year, we spend more time on it and it never seems to get better.
In this book I’ll show you why our massive science fair efforts produce so little fruit. I’ll also explain why Science Fair is bad for kids, bad for teachers, bad for schools, and bad for our whole country! In addition, I’ll reveal why, despite all this, we do Science Fair anyway.
There’s hope, though. Kids can learn the process of science and produce meaningful Science Fair projects. In my classroom, I transformed our Science Fair from liability to learning experience. This survivor’s manual will show you how you can do it, too. If you’re a K-12 science teacher, and are tired of wasting hours/days/weeks on projects that don’t teach kids anything, this book will teach you to save your Science Fair. Science Fair doesn’t have to suck!