
The University of Northern Colorado (UNC) Masters of Education program includes a science methods for its students. As part of this program, I teach the Colorado Springs cohort. During the Fall 2017 semester, my class attended the Colorado Science Conference in Denver and thoroughly enjoyed the variety of classes and vendors. This year I took it one step further and scheduled my students to present for one of the sessions. It was a great success! These pre-service teachers developed science fair projects for the grade level they wish to teach. They perused the Colorado Academic Standards and selected an area of focus to investigate a question, determine a hypothesis, conduct an experiment or activity, collect data, and formulate a conclusion. These projects were displayed on a three-fold boards and presented to teachers, administrators, and other visitors at the conference. We realized that science investigations can be conducted successfully by students of all elementary ages from kindergarten to sixth grade using varying degrees of scaffolding and guidance. My UNC students appreciated this assignment and suggested I make it a requirement for future classes.
What science based projects do you with your students? Let us know in the comments.
Keeping it eleSTEMary,
Katie