April 1 SCIENCE FAIR INFORMATION

Hi everyone,

IMPORTANT SCIENCE FAIR INFORMATION

The Science Fair is quickly approaching. During the next few days off, please get together in your groups and do your experiment. You should take some photos of the process (to put on your display board) and keep a record of what you observe.

The Scientific Method
1. Ask a Question
2. Research your Topic
3. STATE YOUR HYPOTHESIS
4. TEST YOUR HYPOTHESIS

Currently we are on steps 3 and 4 of the Scientific Method. Today I worked with students to help them work out their hypothesis for their project. You may need to go over this with them. After they have a clear hypothesis, they are ready to put on their scientist hats and do their experiment! Make sure to write out all the steps involved in your experiment. This will be your Procedure and it will need to go on your display board.

Reminder:
Your display board must have the following sections:
Question
Hypothesis
Materials Used
Procedure
Results/Observations
Conclusion (what you learned)
+ photos of your experiment, before, during, and after is best.

Hypothesis Tips:

• A hypothesis is an educated guess about how things work.

• Most of the time a hypothesis is written like this: "If _____[I do this] _____, then _____[this]_____ will happen." (Fill in the blanks with the appropriate information from your own experiment.)

• Your hypothesis should be something that you can actually test, what's called a testable hypothesis. In other words, you need to be able to measure both "what you do" and "what will happen."

*http://www.sciencebuddies.org/ is a great resource to help. It is definitely beyond our Grade 1 reading and comprehension level, however, so you will need to help them.

For example, for the experiment we did in our own class, our hypothesis could have been:

If I give a plant water and air, but no sun, then it will still grow tall and healthy.

Procedure

This is an example of the procedure for our class experiment. Yours should show all the steps from the start to finish of your experiment.

1. Fill 4 cups with soil.

2. Put 2 seeds into each cup.

3. Decide which cup will get water, sun, air, or all three.

4. Make signs for each cup.

5. Put the signs on the cup.

6. Put the cup with no sun in a box.

7. Put the cup with no air into a plastic bag.

8. Put the cup that will get all three (sun, air, water) into the window.

9. OBSERVE