Canadian international school

P.O. Box 3976, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Telephone: +971 2 556 4206 Fax: +971 2 556 4207
Website: www.cisabudhabi.com E-mail: admin@cisabudhabi.com

CIS Science Fair 2015

Dear Parents and Guardians,
This year, CIS will be holding its fifth annual science fair! We are very excited
to offer this to our students. It is a great way for them to participate in an
educational event and showcase what skills they are learning. The science fair
will take place on the following dates:
Tuesday, Morning Only, April 28: Grades 1-3: This is OPTIONAL. There
will be NO class time given for these projects. Since not all students will be
participating, all work must be done at home. However, each Grade 1-3 class
will have a display set up for visitors to see what they have been studying in
school. These displays will be done in class, as a group effort, but are
independent from any project a child chooses to do at home. Furthermore,
these class displays are for sharing purposes only and will not be part of the
judging.
Wednesday, All Day, April 29: Grades 4-6: This is MANDATORY. Some
class time may be given. This will be up to the discretion of your childs
science teacher. This project may be used as a science mark. Again, this is up
to the discretion of the individual teacher.
Students will be working individually on their projects. No partner or
team projects.
Science Fair Overview
For those of you who have never been to or seen a science fair, here is a quick
rundown of how it will work. Students will complete an invention or experiment.
The students may choose any topic they want. Their project does not have to
correspond with what they are learning in science at school.
Types of Projects:
There are two types of Science Fair Projects:
Investigations: Students must ask a question, learn about the topic,
design and complete an experiment.
Inventions: Students must identify a real world problem, invent a
gadget to solve that problem, and test their invention.
Directly relaying information on a topic will not be accepted. Ultimately, all
projects MUST BE TESTABLE. This means that students are not permitted
to do conventional research reports. Instead, there must be some
experimental element to what students present to their audience.
When choosing a project, students must keep in mind that they will NOT have
access to power or water. They may use batteries or fill things with water, but

they cannot plug anything in or hook up to a water source. Also, no animals or

living organisms may be harmed. It is best to talk to your teacher before doing
a project involving something living, and get the ok. Also, please be conscious
of how much space the project takes up. Students will be sharing a table with
someone else, which means we cannot have large projects or we will not have
enough room.
Categories of Projects
Once a student has chosen a project, they will need to pick ONE of the
following categories to enter it in.
1. Biological Sciences:

includes projects that involve living things or once living things

examples of projects in this category are studies of plant growth, cell

structure, molds, preservatives, growth and development

2. Physical Sciences:

includes projects involving non-living things

math, computer, and engineering projects are included in this category

other topics in this category are aerodynamics, probability, crystal

growth, evaporation, solar power, electrical circuits, chemistry, forces
and motion

3. Earth/Environmental Sciences:

includes projects involving the earth, physical phenomena, the

environment and the relationships of living things to each other and/or to
the environment

examples for projects in this category are weather, astronomy,

rocks/minerals, and water organisms in their habitat, relationships
between various organisms, and studies on how peoples actions affect
the environment

4. Human Sciences:

anything that pertains to behaviour, society, and health

includes projects related to health, psychology, or consumer/product

testing

examples would be perception studies, aptitude and attitude surveys,

product comparisons, and various exercise studies

After Selecting a Project

After a project has been chosen, the student must get approval from their
teacher, and be sure that their project is being entered in the proper category.
Then they can start gathering information and materials. After that they can
follow the attached sheet on what needs to be displayed on their science fair
board.
On the assigned day, the students will bring their projects to school and set up
at 7:30 am. Parents will be allowed to help their child get set up and get
everything in place. Judging will then commence and ALL PARENTS MUST
LEAVE THE AREA. After judging, parents and students will be allowed to walk
around and look at all the work. Prizes will then be awarded in each category.
All students (and those Gr. 1-3 students who choose to participate) must let
their teacher know what their project is, and what category it will be entered in,
by Thursday, March 19, 2015.

Extra Information
Please keep in mind that these are STUDENT PROJECTS and therefore should
be done BY THE STUDENT! Parents are, of course, encouraged to help and
support, but this should be the students work! Part of the judging sheet looks
at how much parent involvement there was. If it appears it has been done by a
parent, the student will lose points.
There are many good websites that give ideas on science fair projects and how
to do a project. Some of our favorites include:

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/
http://school.discoveryeducation.com/sciencefaircentral/
http://www.ipl.org/div/projectguide/

There will also be books on display in the library to get ideas from. Keep in
mind that plagiarism will NOT be allowed. All work must be the students! If
students are taking information from somewhere, they must put it into their
own words. They must also do a bibliography of where their information was
taken from, including websites.

We hope that this will be a fun week for everyone!

Mr. Mark, Ms. Candice, Mr. Devone, Ms. Kim, and Ms. Kathryn
Gr. 1-6 Science Fair Coordinators

Project Presentation
(The following information was taken from the website, http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/fair.html
and was written by Lynne Bleeker; Science teacher, science fair organizer and judge.)

A successful science fair project does not have to be expensive or even terribly timeconsuming. However, it does require some planning and careful thought. Projects
become frustrating to students, parents and teachers when they are left to the last
minute and thus don't have the chance to be as good as they possibly can. You can't
rush good science!
THE FOLLOWING 11 SECTIONS MUST BE ON DISPLAY
1. Title: Ideally the title of your project should be catchy, an "interest-grabber," but
it should also describe the project well enough that people reading your report can
quickly figure out what you were studying. You will want to write your Title and
Background sections AFTER you have come up with a good question to study.
2. Background Research and Purpose: The background research section is
where you include information that you researched about your subject and you tell
your project readers why you chose the project you did. This is where you include
information that will help your audience understand your topic.
3. The Problem: Probably the most difficult part of a science fair project is coming
up with a good testable question. It is recommended that students:
A. think about WHAT INTERESTS them.
B. think of a TESTABLE QUESTION about the subject.
If you are doing a project about something that interests you, you will likely enjoy the
research more and stick with it long enough to get some good data. Remember, you
are being a scientist. Scientists go to work each day because they are interested in
what they are studying and because they are curious to know the answers to the
questions they are researching.
Some of the best science fair projects I have seen have also been the simplest. For
example, I had students whose parents bought "off-brands" of cereal. They wondered
if those brands were really any different from the name brands. They bought 3 or 4
different brands of the same type of cereal and asked permission to test them with the
whole class. They had their peers evaluate them for taste, appearance, and sogginess
in milk after 1 minute. They also did a cost comparison. They got a lot of interesting
data! (I won't tell you what they found out in case you want to do something similar!)
Other students who like sports have done experiments with the equipment for their
sport: Do new tennis balls bounce higher than old ones? Do basketballs that are fully
inflated bounce better than flatter ones? These projects just require some tennis balls
or basketballs, some volunteer "bouncers" and a meter tape or meter stick! There are
many good sources for science fair project questions. Projects involving food - tasting,
smelling etc - can be very simple to set up yet also very interesting. "Can blindfolded
people taste the difference between ...?" You can also get lots of ideas from science
trade books.
4. Prediction or Hypothesis: As soon as you come up with a testable question,
you will probably instantly have a hypothesis (prediction) about what the results will
be from your testing. It's a good idea to write this down before starting, because it
may change as you go about your experimenting.
5. Materials and Procedure: Once you have come up with a question that you
can actually test with materials at your disposal, you need to figure out how to set up
the tests. If you will have a survey for your participants to fill out, get that written up

and duplicated. If you will need a chart to write down your test results, get it made. If
you take the time to make it look nice with a straight-edge, you can include the
actual chart or survey instrument in your project write-up. This really impresses the
judges!
6. Log Book: This can be done in a small notebook, or students can make their
own. Keep good notes of the things you have tried and plan to include even the
"didn't-works" and "mess-ups" in your log book. Make sure to put the date and time
beside each entry. Be sure to try your experiment several times to be sure you have
enough data to make a logical conclusion. If you tell me that one brand of cereal gets
soggier in milk but you've only tried each cereal in one cup of milk, I would suspect
that maybe it was a fluke; you need lots of "trials" (generally at least 3; the more, the
better) for believable data. Remember, too, that you want to keep all of the
experimental factors (variables) the same except the one you are testing. In the
cereal experiment, it wouldn't be fair to all of the cereals if you left one brand in milk
for one minute and tried the others after two minutes or something like that. Again,
GET STARTED EARLY on carrying out your project. You can't still be doing the
experiment the day before the project is due and expect to have a first-class writeup!
7. Pictures: In science fair projects as in life, "a picture is worth a thousand words."
Plan to take pictures of the materials you used and of the experiment as it is being
carried out. If you get started early, you will have time to print the pictures out and
include them as part of your project. You may also display materials you used and
display your experiment if it allows for being moved.
8. Observations: The observation section is where you tell your reader the actual
numbers (or other data) that you got as you were doing the experiment. (In the
tennis ball experiment, this would be a table with the different brands of balls and
the actual heights each of them bounced on each trial.) You might also include a
graph, if your data lends itself to it. But you do not tell your interpretation of the data
- that's for the last section.
9. Conclusion: In the conclusion you finally get to tell your readers what you found
out from the experiment, or how you interpret your data. Students often like to use
this section to expand upon how much they liked doing the experiment or how much
they learned from it ... but really this section should be focused on what you learned
about your original question and hypothesis. For example, DID cheaper cereals get
soggier in milk faster?
10. Bibliography: This is where you write down all books, websites, videos,
magazines and anything else you used to gather information for your report.
11. Your Name and Grade: Your name and grade should clearly be seen on your
display board.
How to Make a Display Board
Project displays tend to be another source of great frustration to students, teachers
and parents ... but they don't have to be! Again, what you need to do is PLAN AHEAD
and then THINK OF YOUR AUDIENCE. Remember that they weren't there when you
did the experiment, so what seems obvious to you will not be obvious to them unless
you make it extremely clear. Ideally, choose a display board that is cardboard and a
"tri-fold," meaning that it folds into a middle, and two side sections. This shape is the
most stable and will stand up in the science fair display. We strongly advise against
the flimsier poster board, which tends to fall down easily and irritates teachers and
judges. The best way to make your board stand out is to paint it or cover it in
colourful paper.

Once you have written or typed up all of the above sections, be sure you have TITLES
for each section that are large and legible (I'd suggest 24 point or so on the
computer). That way if people have questions about some part of your project, they
can go right to the section they need to answer their question. Arrange the sections of
the report on the board in a way that is attractive and also logical. The purpose and
hypothesis should be easy to see right away. Be creative! Use colour and excitement
to grab peoples attention! All of the above sections can be done on the computer and
printed out, or done NEATLY by hand.

Science Fair Project Proposal and Permission Form- Please return

to your homeroom teacher by Thursday, March 19

Students Name: ______________________________________________________________

Grade/Class: __________________

Science Fair Project Question or Problem:

_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________

Brief Description of Project: __________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________

Category: Please Check One!

____ Human Sciences:

____ Physical Sciences:
____ Earth/Environmental Sciences:
____ Biological Sciences:

Parent Signature
_____________________________________________

Teacher Signature
_____________________________________________