School Science Fair Projects

One of the major events a High School student would experience is doing the Science Fair Project. In fact, high school life and learning would not be complete without having to undergo such phase. This article will guide you through its process and in making this highlight event a memorable one.

10 Steps to a Successful Science Fair Project
1. Judging Criteria
There are seven criteria to judge the project which will provide you key to give you complete guidance to make your project. They are the skills, creativity, clarity, neatness, integrity, thoroughness, and finally the results.
2. Types
As there are five types available, just decide which of the projects you will like to conduct.
3. Categories
There are 14 categories for science fair which include social and behavioral science, chemistry, mathematics, medicine and health, computer science, engineering, botany, space and earth science, environmental science, physics, zoology microbiology, and biochemistry.
4. Branches of science
Out of the hundred science branches, you can choose the one which best suits you. You may include games, nutrition, psychology, theories, computer graphics, atomic physics, endangered species and also organic chemistry,.
5. Topics
Before coming up with a final topic for your science fair project, you need to make a list of proposals for different kinds of topics. The various subjects and topics you can choose from are botany, chemistry, physics, behavioral science, engineering, computer, zoology, environment science and much more. You may select any topic or topics in which you are interested.
6. Ideas
When you have decided on the final topic for your project, it is now time to gather ideas to elaborate the topic and to make your project more interesting to learn about.
7. Research Method
One of the important things to learn in making your project is the method of research. Indeed, science fair includes a lot of research, whether experimental or investigatory.
8. Use of Scientific Method
When you are done doing the research you may need to use scientific method to support what you have researched and discovered.
9. Display
The science fair also involves exhibiting the newly gained knowledge of the students and sharing them to the other students and audience. The minimum requirements for your display board are the following: a very catchy title, hypothesis, description, experimental procedures, outcome, analysis and finally, generalization.
10. Project Report
When everything is done, you will finally create a written project report which will contain the whole process you underwent in the project. Remember to document everything from start to end. You also need to follow guidelines in making your project report.

Good Science Fair Projects

Figuring out what the elementary science teacher is looking for in a project can be challenge. There are science teachers who will just give out good science fair projects to send home with the students to do. For the youngest grades the whole class might do the same project. By second or third grade they might send home a list of projects to choose from. The older grades might get a specific topic and specific choices of websites to use. By middle and high school, they most likely are on their own, send home the topic, the requirements and let them find their own. On top of that, each teacher you run across will treat the whole thing in a slightly different way.

Here are two of the biggest problems parents face with good science fair projects for their children.

Problem #1 is misunderstanding the assignment.

Nine time out of ten, everything is clearly spelled out on the science fair assignment sheet that was sent home. Lots of schools also have these things posted online. It is very important that the parent reads this carefully. This is true even for the middle school students. You want to make sure they project chosen matches the assignment. Fortunately and teachers make you bring what you chose in for approval, but the older you get the less that happens.
The most common mistake to avoid is choosing the wrong type of project. Most good science fair projects are investigations that require an experiment where you collect data and draw a conclusions based on your findings. One of the most common type of project found online on the other had are demonstration based project.

Problem #2 is the time factor.

The trick for teachers is not give too much time because people procrastinate, it is a fact of life. At home, any experiment needs to be worked around the rest of the homework for other classes, outside the home commitments and if parent supervision is needed, like with most elementary school projects, the parent's schedules. Working on a good science fair projects needs the same importance placed on the calendar as sports team practices.

By combining these two problems, you can see how by reading the assignment closely ahead of time, you can go out and get the materials you need to have on hand so when the time comes to begin, it can be completed in the time you carved out.