The Science Fair Podcast

 Listen in iTunes 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 […]

     Listen in iTunes 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 […]

    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 […]

Listen in iTunes 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 […]

Listen in iTunes 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 […]

Listen in iTunes 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 […]

Listen in iTunes 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.

Listen in iTunes 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 […]

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” […]

In Episode six, I reveal how students went about crating an observation protocol.  They know that they are trying to find the affect their trash item has on the growth of plants.  But what do they mean by growth?  There are many ways in which a plant grows.  I’ll explain how I engaged students to […]

In episode 5, I describe how my students put their procedures into action.  I detail how students self pace the activity and how I offer tailored support.  I also discuss how I have my students reflect on the process to revise their experimental procedures. Below are links to the web based resources mentioned in the episode. […]

Want to know why I do Science Fair in this unusual way?  I start this episode with a brief outline of how I do science fair and why.  Then I go into how I lead students in writing procedures to test their hypotheses.

In this episode, students return to science class with background research in hand.  They use this research to generate hypotheses.  I discuss the way students debate predictions and use their research to back up their ideas.  I also explain the hypothesis format I use and how it helps students envision the entire experiment.

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 […]

If you’ve been struggling to make Science Fair a meaningful experience for your students and you, join in the conversation on the Science Fair Podcast. 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 […]