SD 23 SCIENCE FAIR JUDGES
Welcome! Thank you so much for joining us this evening!
We really appreciate that you have volunteered your time and energy for this event!
We recommend that you spend a few minutes looking at all of the projects before you start to judge the ones assigned to you. This will give you a frame of reference.
You will be judging between 4-5 projects. Students will have the rubrics at their tables. Find the projects you have been assigned, pick up the rubric, and begin judging.
Please be aware that there are other people trying to judge the same projects. Please keep to a 20 minute time frame per project. If you need to, return after the other judges are finished. If a project on your list is being judged, please move on and come back.
When you finish judging a project, please place a yellow sticker on the top right of the students project board. This will signal that that project has been scored. Our goal is to have each project scored 3-4 times.
All of the projects are arranged by number, except for those requiring ELECTRICAL, which you will find along the walls with electrical outlets. Please look for the region where students have an ‘E’ after their number.
HOW TO ASSIST THE STUDENTS WHO ARE STRUGGLING
Some students may need prompting to tell you all about their projects.
Here are some questions you may consider asking:
1. How did you come up with your topic?
2. What was your favourite part of the experiment?
3. If you were to do this same topic next year, what would you do differently?
4. What was the most challenging part of your experiment? Study? Invention?
To test student understanding (particularly with scientific experiments):
1. What were your controls/constants (the things you had to keep exactly the same so you could compare your experimental group and your control group)?
2. What was your independent variable (the one thing you changed)?
3. How many trials did you do (speaks to the need for repetition)?
4. What statistics did you come up with (how did you crunch your numbers in different ways)?
5. How do the results of your experiment apply to the real world? How can people use your results in their everyday lives?
TYPES OF PROJECTS
· There are three different types of projects that students could have chosen to do:
1. EXPERIMENT: should involve original scientific experiments to test a specific hypothesis. The student(s) should demonstrate excellent collection, analysis and presentation of data.
Example question: How does ______affect ______?
2. STUDY: should involve the collection and analysis of data from other sources to reveal evidence of a fact, situation or pattern of scientific interest. Projects should demonstrate insightful analysis of data collected by other reliable sources.
Example question: What type of relationship exists between ______and ______?
3. INNOVATION: This type of project should involve the invention and evaluation of a new device, model technique or approach that would solve some sort of problem. It must demonstrate how the invention was designed/developed, and the student(s) must have used sound understanding of scientific, engineering or technological principles involved.
Example question: In what way could ______improve the performance of ______?
RUBRICS
There is a different type of rubric for each project. These have been colour coded.
Experiment = green Study = pink Innovation = yellow
Students should begin with 4 rubrics at their table that match the type of project they have completed.
SCORING
After you have had a conversation with the student(s), please give them some verbal feedback. In addition, you may use the judges comment card to provide some written feedback: please leave two positive comments and one area for improvement.
Then, please step away, and for each criteria, USE YOUR PEN to circle the bubble that best represents what the student(s) have done. YES, YOU CAN CIRCLE BETWEEN THE BUBLES. Remember that there are TWO PAGES (the rubrics have 2 sides!)
When you are finished judging all of your projects, please BRING THE RUBRICS BACK TO THE EVALUATION TABLE. Please put your forms in the basket.
You should know that the students WILL NOT see these sheets, and we ask that you share all positive and helpful comments with the students face to face.
Lastly, we would greatly appreciate if you could take a moment and fill out the FEEDBACK SHEET, so we can get some feedback from you to improve our fair next year.
Thank you again for your contribution! We couldn’t do it without you!