Camp Hain

010 Surviving Science Fair: The Day Of - Insights and Tips

• Tia Hain • Season 1 • Episode 10

Share episode

In this episode, we explore the day-of logistics for conducting a Science Fair, particularly within the framework of Classical Conversations' Challenge A program. The episode highlights the presenter’s personal experiences and strategies, including organizing presentations, coordinating judges, and managing a potluck. It also addresses challenges encountered, such as the need for better planning of breaks and judge amenities. Additionally, the importance of practice and feedback in improving student presentations is emphasized. The episode aims to help both homeschoolers and public school participants in effectively managing Science Fair activities.

00:00 Introduction and Carl Sagan's Quote
01:14 Classical Conversations and Science Education
02:52 Science Fair Day Overview
04:06 Detailed Science Fair Day Schedule
08:21 Judging and Presentations
20:03 Reflections and Improvements
22:39 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

010 Science Fair Part 2 The Day of

Tia: [00:00:00] Surviving Science Fair. 

 Part two, the day of.

As a fun game, see if you can figure out all the places I had to add in some recordings because I am sick this week and I was not sick when I recorded this the first time.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. Carl Sagan. While Carl Sagan is almost as famous for being an agnostic as he is for being a scientist I do find this particular quote quite relevant.

 One of the things I found out in my studies is that he is not an atheist. For some reason, I always thought he was an atheist, and I think he's attributed to being an atheist. But when I did a little research on this particular quote, he said he is agnostic. When people would call him atheist, he would correct them saying, no, he is agnostic. He believed that to [00:01:00] be an atheist you would have to have definitive proof that there is no God, and he said he did not have that information. 

Anyway, why I think the quote is relevant is I think it's true. This is one of the many reasons why Classical Conversations has a science strand each and every year, which is more than public schools.

I remember, at least when I was in public school, I only had to take two years of science and that was to go to college. When I was in high school, I only had to take two years of science. I had to take two more years when I got to college, but I didn't have to take it every year. That was even to go to college. I don't remember what you needed just to graduate. 

In Classical Conversations, we start off with Science Fair in Challenge A. There's a science strand through the whole year, but our big thing is Science Fair . It's to give the new Challenge kids, cause remember in Challenge A they are brand new to Challenge, it gives them an introduction to the scientific method, [00:02:00] research, writing a scientific paper, and presenting that research . They do all those things with the Science Fair. 

They will be doing a form of this each year in Challenge, including a 15 page research paper in Challenge 1, and they also have to come up with a presentation to present that research paper, or the information they learned in the research paper, they are not supposed to just read the research paper.

 Science Fair is an introduction into this, and that is how we treated it as my Challenge A class. We treated it as an introduction, not they're supposed to be perfect scholars, seniors doing this Science Fair. They're the equivalent of 7th grade, and that was how we treated it. 

For those not in Classical Conversations but still doing Science Fair, this episode will probably still be helpful.

Last week's episode was getting ready for Science Fair. This week's episode is how we structured our day, how [00:03:00] other communities structure theirs, how ours went, some insights I got, and what I would do differently next time.

Right now, welcome to Camp Hain, the adventures of a Catholic family that homeschools, public schools, online schools, and has one super obsessed with baseball kid. Currently, Conversations Challenge A Director, so a lot of this podcast channel is related to that for now. I post a new podcast every Friday, and I also post other videos on YouTube as well. I also post videos about math, mostly algebra since I tutor, and even just our life.

We love our adventures, so come along for the ride and click the subscribe or follow button if you are a homeschooler, or are thinking about homeschooling, or even if this content just interests you. There, I've said the things. Let's move on into the content. 

This is part two of Surviving Science Fair, the day of. If you'd like part one, which is the plan and how to get to [00:04:00] here, you can check out the previous episode, episode 009 of this podcast.

Our actual Science Fair day. We did it during week 19 of our community day. We have 11 kids in our Challenge group. It is a challenge. It is fun. They are all talkers and all participators, and that part is absolutely wonderful. But there's 11 of them. I'm definitely outnumbered. What we decided to do was to have all of the kids just go one after the other. I had a schedule set up. I'll walk through this in more detail.

But we had them all set up to just go one after the other. That way the judges could all watch them at once. They had their papers and forms to fill out, which I just used the one that was in the back of the guide for the judges. 

That way the parents knew what time their kids were going so they could come in for the specific [00:05:00] time when their child was presenting. And we actually stayed on schedule pretty well. I'm kind of impressed with that. 

We had chairs and stuff set up. It was in a gymnasium type area. That way they could just come in we had a lot of parents that they just switched out. They came in for their kid and then they left afterward and like the next group of parents came in. It was kind of amusing but it worked really well. 

What a lot of communities do is they don't use a community day. They do it either on a weekend or an evening. They have the kids in separate areas and the judges go up to them and they have three judges and the kids present. They do their whole presentation just for the judge. I'm guessing there might be other people there but they're just standing and watching them do their presentation and so the kids end up doing their presentation three times and then the judges fill out their forms from [00:06:00] there.

 I'm not really sure how this would work with a large group. I couldn't figure it out. To be honest, it's hard for us to use our same venue when it's not during our community day. We rent out part of a church and for Tuesdays we have it all day Tuesday and that's fine. But there's not a lot of extra time that we could rent out that space.

 I just don't think it would work well for us anyway, especially to have 11 kids set up and only three judges going around at a time. A lot of kids would just be standing there bored. I just don't know how that would work out for us. 

But for our day what we did is normally our community day starts at 8:30 in the morning for the Challenge classes and it starts at 9:15 for our Foundations and Essentials. So from 9:15 to 9:30 we all gather together for morning assembly and then the Foundations class starts, and the Challenge classes go [00:07:00] back to their Challenge room. 

We decided to take that 8:30 to 9:15 time for the kids to come in. We had tables, like those long tables, set up around our gym. Around the edges of our gym.

And I got some cheap plastic tablecloths from the $1 25 store. I put the tablecloths on everything and that was enough room to set up two presentations per table. I had two children per table. They set up their trifold boards and all their props in front. 

Then we had one main table set up where we had a bunch of chairs in rows going back for the judges and parents to sit and for the kids to sit as well while the presentations were being given. 

I'm just going to be honest about my class. I told them they couldn't sit next to each other and they had to be very good audience members [00:08:00] to everybody presenting. That was what we did during that 8:30 to 9:15 time. They also got changed into their nice clothes if they had nice clothes to wear that they didn't wear to class that day or to community day that day.

 We had our morning assembly like we normally do with the Foundations and Essentials classes. Then we had a 10 minute window for our judges to come in. I went over the judges forms with them. We end up having five judges. I didn't realize we were only supposed to have three. I had asked a bunch of people. I ended up getting five of them that said they wanted to do it. I thought that was great. More the merrier. 

I had clipboards with 11 copies of the judge's form for each clipboard as well as a copy of the presentation schedule so they knew how it was going to go. I had each one of those for the judges. Each judge had their own clipboard with their stuff on it. I let them choose pencil or pen, [00:09:00] whatever they wanted to use. 

Also off to the side, we had a potluck table set up. We decided to have a potluck for our judges and the kids and the families that came to watch. With 11 students we had a lot of stuff for this potluck. The person who had directed it before had a nacho potluck. I said that sounds fabulous. We're gonna do that same thing.

I went ahead and bought a bunch of stuff at Costco because I was going to Costco like a couple weeks before this. It all worked out perfect. We had that all set up on the side. The meat and beans and stuff stayed in there nice warm crock pots and instant pots while we were doing the presentations.

 I had it set up so each student had 10 minutes to give their presentation and answer any questions that the audience or the judges had.

If the judges had more questions, during our lunch time, the kids would be back set up at their table that they had set up at the beginning, [00:10:00] and the judges could go around to each student and ask more questions then. 

We also had it set up so the Foundations, kids could come in and ask questions and get to know what Science Fair is going to be like, because one of the things that happened is my son who did the can crushing experiment, he actually did that one because he had seen another student do that same one two years before and he really liked the idea of it. He had already had this plan. It's really a neat way for the younger kids to see what the older kids are doing. 

Anyway, we went through the schedule of kids and like I said, we had 11 kids. It took up the entire morning and I had a two minute break in between each presentation. to switch out. What would happen would be the next student coming up in line would go get their trifold board and any props that they needed for their presentation and put it up on the main presentation table while the [00:11:00] other student would take all their stuff from it, the one that had just done their presentation, would take it and go back to their spot on their table around the room.

 That actually worked out really, really well.

Then we went through all the students that way. 

At lunchtime, the judges could go up and get their lunch. All the families could go up and get their lunch, but the students had to go back to their boards and spend the entire lunch break presenting to anybody that wanted the presentation.

For example, how my child did it, he would ask when people would come up, would you like to hear my presentation? Would you like to ask me questions? Or would you like to see a demonstration? And he could actually do a demonstration of his can crushing experiment. We bought a burner so he could have it there. We had a sign saying caution hot, do not touch.

The different students would do different things when people would come up to them around at lunchtime. By the way, I did tell the [00:12:00] parents to make sure their student packed a good snack because they would need that to get them through because they would not be eating lunch until one o'clock.

It was helpful that a few of our kids experiments were food related and they brought in food products for them to have, so that also helped tide them over. 

 At this point we've gone through the whole lunch break and it took a while. I had a couple judges that used up that lunch break to really talk to the students and really make sure they did their judging very well. 

After that, so we're at one o'clock now, our community day normally goes until 3:30. I told the parents we're probably going to end at three because everybody's going to be exhausted from doing the Science Fair anyway. 

I had the students go ahead and go through the potluck line, get their food, get nice sustenance and head back to the [00:13:00] room and just enjoy their lunch break because we needed to stay in the room now.

 Since the regular other classes were now going, so the Challenge kids were back in session as well as the Essentials kids needed to use that room that we were in for the Science Fair. 

We actually stopped 10 minutes before one and did a quick cleanup. All the kids took all their stuff. Set it aside back in the room. Some of them were able to take it to their parents car. 

I had quite a few parents still there help me clean up those plastic table claws were great. Cause you could just wrap everything up all the messes that they made and put that back. Then the kids went through the potluck line and then went back to their room and just kind of decompress for a while.

I grabbed all the forms from the judges. Now, I've got 55 forms that if you see the judge's form in the back of the CC guide, there's a bunch of different [00:14:00] stuff that the judges can score as well as give some notes and insights. Those scores are from one to five. So the possibility of the highest score that they could get is a hundred. All these points that they're getting are out of a hundred. 

I have to go through these 55 forms and count all these points up out of a hundred and then I took the five forms for each student and I averaged what the score was because the scores actually varied. 

I had one judge that was very generous. They were very generous with their scoring. They gave a lot of high scores. I had one other judge that was very strict in their scoring and very particular about what they wanted. My other three judges were more middle of the road. 

 While I did that, because that ended up taking me quite a long time, I let the kids finish up eating their lunch because they were not going to let me leave. They were [00:15:00] not going to let our day end without knowing who was first, second, and third. They wanted to know their places. Like I said before, my class is very competitive. They did not want me to just go home and take care of this stuff and let them know the next week. They wanted to know then and there.

What I had done was I kind of figured this is how they would be. I had some cartography games already planned for them to do while I was adding up the scores and figuring out who was first, second, and third. I was very glad I did that because I needed to keep them busy. To have eleven kids in that room while I'm trying to concentrate and do math was Interesting to say the least.

One of the things I did is I had one of those giant post it papers. I have like a couple tablets of them. I took those and set them out on the table and put them in pairs and a group of three. I had four different groups and I gave them a bunch of markers and I'm like, draw Asia. You guys are working on [00:16:00] learning Asia as it is. Draw all of Asia, all the countries and label all the capitals. If they finished, I told them, like, get out another one and do it again. That was what they did .

Once I had figured out who was first, second, and third, and then handed out their prizes, we read our paper because the students had finished writing an essay paper on The Secret Garden. I had them read their papers and that took us all the way up until three o'clock. 

Now, a couple of insights that I thought were interesting that I didn't even realize, well, one of them I didn't realize until the next day. I have three students that have had siblings go through Science Fair before. And I have only three students that have had a sibling do Science Fair before. I have four students that have had siblings that have already gone through Challenge. All the rest of my students, they are the first [00:17:00] one to go through Challenge. 

One of those students, his older sibling didn't start till Challenge B. He didn't do Science Fair.

I thought it was interesting that first, second, and third place went to the kids that had siblings that had already gone through Science Fair before. I did mention that to the parents and I wanted them to express it to their children because I didn't realize at the time when we were in class to let them know.

And that it wasn't an unfair advantage. These kids definitely deserved first, second, and third place. Their presentations were great, but it shows how, I'm going to use a baseball analogy here, but it shows how you can practice a lot, but until you are actually playing the game. Playing the game gives you more insight into how the game itself works.

And so it shows even with this doing Science Fair, the kids and parents that had already gone through Science Fair [00:18:00] knew just that little bit more to be able to do really well and have their presentations work really well. 

Then another thing that I found out was we did a practice in class. This is technically what would be week 19 of CC is when we did Science Fair.

So our science strand on week 18, I went ahead and broke the class up into two groups and I had one of the other moms take a group into another room and we had the kids practice their presentations or at least what they had so far. 

We also had the students that weren't presenting who were watching the presentations fill out on post it notes Just a quick one, two, three rating system for how they were doing on certain things. Like for their body presentation Are they fidgeting? one would be needs help two would be good job and three would be [00:19:00] excellent.

 Having them do that and then that other mom and I giving the students notes on what we saw so they could take that next week and practice before they did their real presentation in front of the judges That helped them a lot.

One of the moms who had already done Science Fair before she actually told me that she was really impressed with every kid that did their presentation, because you could tell they had practiced it . Gotten feedback and then could practice it again. As well as I had the other parents that had that feedback, say they were really appreciative because they were able to use that feedback and help their children do better in their presentations.

 We got a lot of compliments from other people outside of our class for how well all the kids did with their presentations. 

I was really glad that we did that. If you are going to have a class [00:20:00] make sure that they practice with getting good feedback .

Now, what would I do differently?

One of the things I noticed based off the questions that some of the judges were asking and when I actually really saw the presentation and was able to really pay attention, I had a couple of experiments end up with more than one independent variable. 

What I would do is I would have somebody else help check those things earlier in the weeks. When I read that Science Lab Journal, when they were writing down their controls, and we were figuring out what the variables were. I would have had another set of eyes on that to make sure I didn't miss anything. Because I caught a few things that got changed but then I realized that I missed a few things. Part of it was just having 11 students and all those things going on as well as my own child doing the Science Fair as [00:21:00] well.

Another thing that I would do differently is, because I had 11 kids and time was really tight on what we could use in that space, I didn't plan a break. Just a bathroom break. Finally, about halfway through, the judges are like, I gotta go. We need to pause for a bit. 

 They were very kind and quick. It put us a little bit behind. I would say about maybe seven or eight minutes behind. We were able to make that up though, with the rest of the presentations . The transition from one student to the other. We did it a little more quickly. We eventually made up those minutes and I did have a five minute buffer at the end. That worked out okay, but I was like, Oh, I really should have planned that. Sorry. 

Another thing I would do is I would make sure we had coffee and water for the judges. I didn't think to do that. I was worrying about the potluck, but I wasn't thinking about they're there for their entire morning. I should have had coffee and water for the [00:22:00] judges.

One of my judges was actually the woman who's done Challenge A directing the last two years and she's like... maybe you should tell the judges that we have coffee in the kitchen if they would like it. I'm like Oh yeah, that's a really good idea. That's another thing I would plan. 

I would make sure to build in time for tallying the judges forms because the kids want to know. They want to know right away who got first, second, and third. I didn't realize it took me almost an hour to tally all those forms. I didn't have that time built in. At least I had those games planned . I was able to have them do the games, but I didn't technically build in the time for it.

Okay, we have come to the end. Hopefully it is very helpful for you if you are doing Science Fair whether you are actually working with your children for their experiment for their Science Fair or you're leading a Science Fair especially. I really hope this is helpful. 

When Carl Sagan said, we live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and [00:23:00] technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology, he might not have known about Classical Conversations and how well it does in preparing students with science.

With Science Fair as one of their first stepping stones, I hope we can eventually prove him wrong. If you like this episode, give it a thumbs up, let the algorithm do the work, and I can make more. Subscribe or follow for more like this. Until next time.