Andover School of Montessori’s Science Fair gives students a chance to engage in science and engineering discovery through hands-on experience. Through the scientific method and the engineering design process, students learn about emerging fields of science and engineering, while developing important academic and life skills – from reading, writing, and math to communication and design. Communication skills are honed through writing lab reports, creating visually appealing display boards, and orally presenting their findings to our community. Engaging in an independent research project provides a solid foundation to support development of scientific thinking while providing context and practice to the skills and concepts students explore in the classroom.
This year’s projects ranged in topics from mitosis and memory recall to airplane design effects on distance traveled and plant growth.
Students in grades 3-8 dedicated the past four months to navigating the science fair process under the guidance of their teachers and industry experts from the ASM community. The students mastered time management to meet project deadlines, honed their skills in researching, gathering, and analyzing measurable data, and determined the accuracy of their hypotheses. By designing and executing experiments, they grew to embrace mistakes as a fundamental part of the scientific process.
“I had the pleasure of mentoring a few ASM middle school students for the Science Fair. I was impressed with the wide ranging topics that the students selected to research such as water quality, artificial intelligence, and brain and cognitive science. I was encouraged that students were very receptive to feedback and made noticeable improvements.” Andrew Yu, Parent Mentor
As many as ten students have been chosen to advance to the Massachusetts Regional Science Fair in April, presenting projects on the following topics:
- How does different color light affect plant growth?
- What allows you to retain information better: Writing or typing?
- How does the source of water affect the concentration of copper and lead present?
- Can humans tell the difference between AI and human writing?
- How does the design of a paper airplane affect the distance it travels?
- Which added plant nutrient best affects a pea plant’s growth?
- How does de-icing road salt affect plants and their growth?
- Does the PSI of a football affect a player’s catching rate?
- How does exercise intensity influence memory recall?
- How does listening to pop, rock, or classical music affect the average person’s memory?
