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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)

    Listen in iTunes

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 21^st 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

Organizing Data (Gdoc) (PDF)

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.

Organizing Data (Gdoc) (PDF)

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!

Links from this episode:

Reflection and Data Organization Directions (MSWord, PDF)

Creating Graph Directions (MSWord, PDF)

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.

Reflection

Critical Thinking Rubric (This is a rubric created by my school and used across the grades)

In episode 2 I discuss how students choose an independent variable for their project, and how to include it in a testable question.  For this lesson students also learned to differential independent and dependent variables.  In addition, I elaborate on how I collaborated with my Humanities teacher to do the background research portion of the Science Fari project.

Here’s a link to the type of notebooks I got students for their science fair projects.

In this first episode, I talk about how I introduce the science fair concept to my seventh grade students.  The whole podcast is recorded on my commute to work, so it lasts less than fifteen minutes .  Check out this podcast each day as I talk about my day-to-day experiences and challenges working through the science fair process with my students.

Please email me with your experiences and questions at adam@sciencenugget.com.