Too often science fair projects are viewed by students as more stuff to read. From a kid’s point of view, experimenting is fun. It’s all the reading and writing that most object to. But even this can be “less painful” if they start out with a plan. In other words, they have to be organized.
Science fair projects follow the scientific method, which is an organized system used by scientists to identify problems and determine how to solve them. Benefits other than developing organizational skills include:
- Developing study and research skills
- Developing a positive attitude toward science.
- Learning how to discover answers for themselves.
- Improving their self-esteem by giving them an opportunity to display their work for a variety of audiences
- Acquiring a variety of skills in a cross-curricular format that gives sense and meaning to their learning such as:data collection, organization, and computation research and report writing including note taking and outlining, higher level thinking skills such as summarizing, inferencing, and drawing conclusions.
- Improve written and oral presentation skills