How to Teach Kids to Do a Research-Based Science Fair Project
For a kid to research and create a science fair project, he must first be taught basic research skills and how to follow the scientific method. It is also important to encourage each student to think creatively about a question or idea he may want to explore in his experiment. One of the best ways to encourage students to engage with proper scientific research is to make the process fun and interesting. It is also important for students to practice this process before going at it on their own.
Instructions
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1
Explain to the kids the basics of the scientific method. The scientific method can be discussed simply as the following steps: observing, questioning, hypothesizing, predicting, experimenting, recording, analyzing and concluding.
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2
Conduct a research-based science experiment with the students as a class prior to assigning individual science fair projects. For instance, conduct a simple plant experiment that involves testing how certain types chemicals, such as bleach, soap and gasoline, affect plant growth. Students can research and predict how each chemical will affect the plants, create a hypothesis and record their observations. At the end of the experiment students can write a report and develop conclusions about the effects of certain chemicals on plant growth. Explain to the kids each step of the experiment and why it is important. For example, explain why it is necessary to have a controlled portion of the experiment that represents what is constant. This process could span the length of a few weeks to ensure that students participate in every step of the scientific method. Another possible experiment could be observing how mold grows on a slice of bread in refrigerated temperatures, room temperatures, and warm temperatures.
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3
Show the kids examples of kids' science fair experiments from past years. This will give the kids an idea of what you're looking for and allow you to explain how previous students conducted their research. Viewing past examples of science fair projects will inspire kids and possibly spark a creative idea or two.
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Provide the students with many different resources to use in their research. Explain how they can use the resources to discover a scientific question that needs answering. Resources can include the Internet, science books, science-related news articles, science podcasts and science films, TV shows and documentaries.
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5
Read over each student's experiment proposal with them one-on-one. Determine whether the proposed experiment would produce valid results and explain to them its possible limitations. Make suggestions about how the student could tweak the experiment to better answer his research question.
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Tips & Warnings
Make your demonstration experiment from Step 2 as fun and exciting as possible while keeping it simple. The experiment should be easy to follow and demonstrate the basic steps in the scientific method, but it should also be fun and hands-on.
References
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