Mrs. Gallagher, 6th grade science teacher, hosted a science fair for her 6th grade students in December. Students created projects demonstrating the scientific method and presented them to other classes and grades.

In an effort to get students to collaborate more, Mrs. Gallagher developed the project. She said,
“It alleviated a lot of ‘I don’t wanna work here or I don’t wanna do that’ because they didn’t have that option.”

6th graders presenting to every grade in the school was the best part of the science fair to Mrs. Gallagher. She really thinks her 6th grade students want to be proud of their work and sound like they know what they’re talking about. Mrs. Gallagher said, “So for me it’s really watching them present to other people”

Mrs. Gallagher said that her least favorite part of the projects “was the lack of focus.” However, she said that adding daily assessments where students “reflect” on what they did will help the lack of focus.

Some of the 6th graders had amazing ideas that interested Mrs. Gallagher but the one that stood out to her the most was a group in her 2nd period class that was identifying a variable while doing an experiment. “Their awareness that they use different types of salts could affect their outcome,” said Mrs. Gallagher..

Although the science fair was a tremendous success overall, Mrs. Gallagher explained that she wants her students to be “self motivated” and had to “refocus” the class often.

Not all groups were prepared when it was time to present so Mrs Gallagher gave those students an opportunity to close the project so that failure wasn’t something that was even going to be brought up, “They were given the option to come in for lunch and also they were given the option to bring it home or have a member of the group complete it on their own time.”

A generous amount of volunteers will help Mrs. Gallagher set up the science fair if she had to finish it in 30 minutes. But since she was already prepared for everything she wouldn’t need the help. “A day before or 2 days before it’s important to practice what they are going to say,” said Mrs. Gallagher.

Dayanna Reyes is a 6th grade student in Mrs. Gallagher’s science class. She participated in the science fair. She felt nervous while presenting on a scale from 1-10 she said a 5.

The science project must be a lot to plan and figure out but our talented Dayanna said, “It only took a week to plan.”

Science lends itself to failure, if that were to happen to Dayanna she would be very “disappointed” because she worked so hard on this project and it took all week to finish.

However, Mrs Gallagher often talks about the scientific method and how failure is sometimes necessary.

Ian Pena is a 6th grade student who took part in the science fair and who is also one of Mrs. Gallagher’s students. The science fair made Pena nervous, but he managed to plan his whole project in 40 minutes.

When it was time to actually start thinking about what the topic of the article would be, it wasn’t hard for Pena. Ian heard some of other people’s ideas and changed his plan for the project.

Congratulations! To all the 6th graders who took part in the science fair. Everyone did a great job while presenting. You 6th graders are so creative and talented.