science: How Do You Start Your Introduction On Science Fairs

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

How Do You Start Your Introduction On Science Fairs

Step #1 – Establish Goals and Objectives

The first step in putting together an introductory lesson plan on science fairs is to set your objects and goals. For example, your goals may be to educate students about what a science fair is and to get 75 percent or more of your students to sign up to participate in this school event. You may also set a goal to get all of your students to complete a project.

Step #2 – Introductory Activity

The introductory activity is what kicks off your lesson. There are several ways to approach this activity. There is the boring way, which would be to simply give a lecture on what a science fair is. The more exciting option is to have students gather around a table and have to complete a winning science fair experiment. Make sure you select an experiment that has crowd appeal.

Step #3 – Media Presentation

The next step will be to give some sort of media presentation. For example, you can play highlights from previous year’s science fairs, or you can play an advertisement for a science competition or the state science fair. The objective of this activity is to show kids what a science fair or competition looks like and to get them interested in the event.

Step #4 – Present the Details About the Science Fair Circuit

Participation in the school science fair may be mandatory, but if students do well at this level then they have the chance to go to state and national level science fairs. At each level new prizes and awards are offered. During this activity you will explain the science fair circuit and you will go over what each level has to offer in terms of prizes and perks, such as getting out of school or going to the nation’s capital.

Step #5 – Reel Them In

The final activity in this lesson will be to hand out the entry forms for the science fair. Students can take these home and start working on their entries. You will also want to assign your students some sort of homework assignment, such as come up with a list of three ideas for a science fair project. This assignment will help transition your class to the module on science fairs, the scientific method or science experimentation.

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How To Win A Science Fair Contest

Tip #1 – Age Appropriateness Counts When a science fair judge looks at a project they are going to judge its value based partially on the age of the student and the complexity of the project. Students that create projects that are too simple for their grade level are going to receive lower scores than those students that create projects that are more complex than the average project created by someone of their grade level. A good way to select a project idea or topic that will be considered above your grade level is to examine text books or curriculum guides for science classes that are above your grade level. Tip #2 – Select a Topic That You Can Handle While it is important to push the envelope in terms of project complexity, you do not want to over do it. You need to be able to understand your topic and its related concepts in order to complete your project with precision and accuracy. If you select a topic that is too complex then you may not be able to design an experiment that will be manageable for your skill level and available resources. Tip #3 – Take a Unique Approach Uniqueness is one of the main characteristics that will be judged about your project. Uniqueness is very important to implement into the design of your project. You can make your project more unique by asking yourself if there is another way to solve your project’s main question or problem, or if there is a better way to do something or if there is a more interesting way to approach your topic. These simple questions can help you to find new angles that the judges will be intrigued by. Conclusion Winning a science fair contest is not easy to do. There are few prizes to be won and many students try to win the top places in the contest. The best way for you to enhance your chances of wining a science fair contest is to plan out your project, put in your best effort and to organize your time so that you do not have to rush the completion of your entry.