Monday, April 25, 2011

Fungus Among Us - A Super Science Experience!

Hello teacher friends!

In third grade world we have been working on our class science project for our schoolwide Science Night. The 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students performed an experiment at home and then presented their findings to their peers, parents and teachers that night.  The K-3rd grade classes did whole-class projects in order to give our kiddos experience with the scientific method, and our class boards were displayed at Science Night as well.  For my third graders, not only did we make a class board for Science Night, but each of my students had their very own mini board that they completed in class.  

I used a 12x18 inch piece of construction paper folded into thirds for the background of the board.  For the lines and headings I created a template with a horizontal page layout, and created two columns, which creates the right width for each part of the board.  I had to cut out some of the different sections to arrange them to fit on the board, but it all fit in the end!  (Click on the science beaker at the bottom of this post to download the template for you to use!)

Our class experiment was to see if spraying hand sanitizer or soap on bread would keep mold from growing - an experiment which my 17 third grade boys LOVED!!   (Anything dirty or moldy is always a hit!)  Below you can see the entire board filled out:



The hardest part of this project was for my students to write their own conclusions, using their observations to answer our initial question. This was GREAT practice for my kiddos for next year when they do their own individual projects as 4th graders!  Here is one student's observations, labelled diagram and conclusion:



Hope this is something you can all adapt and use with your kiddos!  I saved my students' boards and we are going to display them at Open House in June! :)  They are so proud of their super science work!
Click below for a template...


Happy teaching!

Lindsay

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