Sixth grade students will be eligible to take their projects to the State Science and Technology Fair of Iowa on Friday, March 31. I strongly encourage each sixth grade student to participate in the SSTFI; it is a wonderful opportunity to present work to a wider audience. I will provide further information about this exciting opportunity as our projects develop.
Students have had time in class to research potential topics, and many have selected the topic they'd like to explore. Depending upon the topic chosen, students may require support from families to complete experiments at home or to provide supplies. I'll stay in touch as students develop their projects. By the end of this week, I will have the opportunity to assist most of the Wolves in developing their question, hypothesis, materials list, and procedure for their experiment. Please look for either an e-mail or a list to come home. I work hard with students to keep their supply budget in the $25 or under range, and to use any supplies I have available (particularly specialized science tools). If this is over-budget for any student, please don't hesitate to contact me.
I find it is very helpful to students (and their parents!) to have a list of successive due dates. This helps students to divide the project into manageable pieces and stay on track to finish on time. Here is the list of due dates for this year's Science Fair:
My goal is to set up experiments that will take place at school by Tuesday, February 7 to run through Thursday, February 16*. Please plan to have supplies ready to send by February 6. If your child's experiment takes up a large amount of space, the best course of action will be to set it up at home. I will be in touch if this is the case.
*This is a recommended end-date. Some experiments will take a bit longer. This is okay, as long as all data is collected by February 28 and your child knows they can manage the crunch of putting it all together at the end!
Thank you so much for your support at home of our exciting science work! As always, I welcome your questions and feedback.
Scientifically,
Rachel