Choose your project - choose your project wisely.

Students and Parents

The Science Project is so much more than a fair. It is an opportunity for a student to choose a topic, ask a question, and draw conclusions. It is also an important benchmark in our 6th grade curriculum.
To make it easy for all of us I am using much of what the Science Buddies website has to offer (http://sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_guide_index.shtml). I do require more than they suggest when it comes to references and sample size. Each student will need 5 good references. The sample size is dependent on what the experiment requires. If it's seeds then 100 for each group is a good sample size. If it's plants, then 25 in each group. I know that this is a lot of expense and samples of this size will probably overwhelm our homes and budgets. That's why this year I am suggesting that students use GIZMOS as simulations where sample size or the question just is overwhelming for a student.

Scientists run simulations in the lab when hands-on experiments just aren't practical or possible. Some examples are earthquakes, volcanoes, and hurricanes. The purpose of the project is to ask a question, to read background information, to develop a hypothesis for testing and a way to test it, and to draw conclusions. Then the student scientist presents to peers. The purpose is NOT to make families spend all of their available resources when there are so many time and monetary demands on all of our lives.

Rather than just pick something from a book or even from Science Buddies - check out GIZMOS. There are plenty of GOOD simulations that will be acceptable to use to test a testable question. There are other simulations on the web that are very good also. Another idea is a game you might play on-line or on your game system  such as Runescape, football, or soccer. You might be able to use one of them to test a question. A student once used Runescape to experiment with chopping wood with different axes. He had fun and got to play his game while doing his data collection. Of course, that project just didn't generalize into real life, but it gave him a good 6th grade project.