Kelley

I agree with so much of what you said! I would hate to help students with each step and then wait until the end to evaluate that they had done something wrong. My students enter their projects in the regional and state science fair, so I want to prepare them for the evaluation of those judges and to do their best. In this scenario, I can see myself using a rubric as step by step evaluation, fix one part before moving on to the next. Having a rubric similar to those in the examples would be helpful to our 6th grade team in evaluating the end of year science fair.

This is an interesting idea. Do you ever have students take any sort of career finder quiz? I am thinking about that for the end of the year. Another idea I have is to have my students write a letter to a professional in the field of their science fair project, sharing their findings and asking for any feedback the professional is willing to share. They chose projects in areas they are passionate about, so this could be a way to connect them to a mentor who shares their passions. At the middle school level, they may not be sure yet what career options exist.

Thank you for sharing this information. This sounds similar to the website I investigated (iNaturalist) and it is good to hear that it sounds more cumbersome for students to use/create an account. This might be something I could log in to on the class ipad for them to use together.

This is a great idea. My students have worked a lot on creative writing this year, but mostly through the cold winter months. I wonder what might be different for them if we were to practice writing skills outside in the fresh air. This is something I can consider when looking at next week's forecast! Thank you for sharing.

I tried to do the Bat Detective project as my daughter saw a bat outside our house this morning and I thought it would be a fun project to do at home together as a family...but I couldn't get through to a specific link for this project, so I did the Cedar Creek: Eyes on the Wild project instead. This project appealed to me as Minnesota is just north of us and I think my students would be able to see many of the same animals in our area. Participants view pictures captured by trail cams of animals and record which species and how many were visible. Most of what I saw was bison and deer, which we can also see locally. This would be a fun project to do with my middle school students to focus on data collection, which is an area we can improve based on their most recent science fair participation. I would have liked to do a screen-free project and pursue these in the future, but due to the weather this time of year in our area, there are not as many projects available. These are definitely some resources I can share with students that can hopefully promote investigation and curiosity for future science fair projects.

I believe that educators can easily stifle students' ability to observe and wonder or allow these skills to flourish. The most important thing is to provide time and opportunity to allow students to construct their own meaning, investigate passions, and explore self-guided learning. So often in classrooms, I see teachers guiding students to understand, providing answers, and working at very basic levels of understanding. By asking questions beginning with "Why?" or "How?" and allowing students to do the same, teachers can encourage them to seek answers that can't be discovered within the confines of the space and time of a classroom. There are many pressures put on teachers to cover content and standards; looking at these standards in a different way and allowing students the trust and freedom to explore can also meet standards and provide a more meaningful learning experience in the process.

Creating my sound map really helped me to tune in to everything that makes up the wind (not to mention being a great way to start the day with some fresh air!) It was a wet and windy morning, and I was really able to tune in with all the different sounds that make up the wind. It sounds much different this spring, as last year our woods were devastated by the Derecho that hit the midwest. Our neighborhood is at the top of a hill coming off a river valley, and it took a huge hit snapping trees in half when the storm hit. I was able to discern tree branches hitting each other, some snapping as they fell, rain in the trees as it fell to different surfaces, and the leftover leaves from fall rustling somewhere in the tree top. This is a great activity to take time to observe and notice, hopefully prompting students to ask questions, ponder, and reflect, let alone get away from screens for a few minutes and notice the world around them.

I really want to allow students the opportunity engage in science by doing science, asking their own questions that connect to subject about which they are passionate. This takes time and follow through, and when I only get to have students for one period a week, this is a challenge. With my position as an instructional coach, I hope to be able to work with teachers to find more opportunities for co-teaching time so that I have more opportunities to encourage my students to be scientists by doing science.

The key teacher practice I would choose to focus on is to position youth as people who do science. I find that most of my students really enjoy science, and I credit it to our elementary science curriculum and teachers who do a tremendous job making science hands-on and meaningful. There are so many opportunities for authentic connections to science in our area with the DNR Biology Research Station and Iowa Arboretum nearby that connecting to the natural world and finding experts working on real projects is relatively easy to do. Students can also investigate the natural world as their own scientist in our local state and county parks, Des Moines River Valley, and the many prairies and forests that are in our area. Since there are so many opportunities for students to be scientists, this is the key teacher practice I would most like to focus on.   While it sounds very dry, the key student practice that I would choose to focus on the most is the second, "Students take ownership of data quality." I choose this topic as it was an area in this year's science fair that I know could have been improved upon for some of my students. (Thankfully, these students have excellent communication & interview skills and were able to explain the little data they did have very well!) I really appreciated the comment made by Sarah Kim of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute when she said, "Kids can handle really rigorous work." For the students in my talented & gifted program, the classroom does not offer the rigor that will help them grow to their full potential. Combining the process of creating a long-term project for science fair and the freedom to design their own experiment through the State Science & Technology Fair of Iowa allows them to have access to rigor, and there are so many resources in our area for biological projects that I would love the opportunity to capitalize on this more.

I have attempted a few Citizen Science projects informally with students without really knowing what they were! A few years ago, two students and I worked with our local park ranger to update signs and clean out the park's prairie plant library, an area of garden plots that used to contain native species. This proved to be too daunting of a task for just two students, and the park ranger moved on to another job. We never got far enough to do more inquiry than service, as I had hoped to, but would like to pick this project up again someday. I have also had the opportunity to work with students alongside staff from the Iowa DNR's research station at the local wildlife camp I have worked at, but just for a few hours at a time; again, not enough to truly develop a citizen science project.   The Citizen-Science Spotlights in the text and the links shared in this lesson give me so many ideas of projects to pursue! I think my students would really enjoy doing anything with birds, as one investigated native vs. non-native species for his science fair project and two just earned a birding merit badge through Boy Scouts. We have many experts in our area with the Iowa Arboretum, Wildlife Research Station at Ledges State Park, and our community was recently named a Bird-Friendly Community by Bird-Friendly Iowa. I love connecting my students with professionals whose areas of expertise match their interests, and that has been a challenge this year due to COVID. This is something I would like to continue next year if we are able.  Project Feeder Watch also looks like something that we could accomplish while at school, placing feeders in different locations as we have trees, cornfields, residential, and heavily-traveled roads all bordering our school's property.   Doing a project with trees would also be something I know my students and I would enjoy. Again, Ledges State Park & the Des Moines River Valley on which we live are home to many diverse native species of trees, and the Iowa Arboretum has a great deal of work to do repairing damage done by the Derecho that hit the Midwest this summer. My goal would be for students to develop questions and research them, hopefully culminating in a project for the Statewide Science Fair in March and focusing more on inquiry science than just on service work.