Reflections on Middle School Science Fair

hoosiermom
Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:36:29 +0000

In our school corporation, all sixth graders participate in a science fair. Judges are volunteers from the community- many science enthusiasts, engineers, and high school students who have participated in state science fair and/or ISEF. The teachers deliberately do not judge the fair (though all projects are graded by the teacher according to their rubric and judges have no idea what grade a student received). The teacher who organizes the fair is careful to point out that many students have no parental support of their efforts (buying supplies or keeping them on schedule) while some have too much (taking over the project). Judges are specifically instructed to expect a neat presentation but not be fooled by glitz. Scoring is based solely on whether the student had a hypothesis, a control, a method of experimentation, and a conclusion supported by data. Each student is judged at least 3 times, more if there are enough judges (some years students had 5 judges), and results are averaged. A very fair system and similar to what is found at regional, state, and international fairs. Sometimes a very messy project wins because the judges can discern through questioning the student that indeed the student had done the work and analyzed the significance of the results.