Posted by Emerita,
Perhaps our society values scientists, fewer and fewer students are going on to pursue any science learning beyond the minimum requirements for graduation and college entry. If you’re hoping to help reverse this trend, and take science beyond being just a classroom subject, science fairs could be the solution. Science fairs are organized on local, state, national, and international levels. In them, students submit projects which are evaluated by a team of judges. Science fairs help students understand that breakthroughs and discoveries are based on learning what doesn’t work, as much as they are about getting the right answer. Science fairs are as much about learning and having fun as they are about getting the project right.
Our teacher was smart. Rather than just lecturing to us and having us read a dry textbook, she gave us 7th grade science fair projects plants that really taught us about the world we live in. We would get to choose what we learned about and how he went about learning.