Lesson 12 Oral Project Presentation and the Science Fair

10-15 minutes per student

Instructional Objectives

Students will present projects orally fulfilling oral presentation standards. (See Listening and Speaking Strand)

Advanced Preparation/Prerequisite Knowledge

Teacher should be familiar with Oral Presentation rubric and standards. Students will need to be finished with their projects and have all of their materials present on the day of their presentation.

You can do this one of two ways:

1. Schedule a series of days for students to just do oral presentations during the class day.

2. Have students do their actual oral presentations for the judges and you.

How you approach this will depend on the number of students involved. Since we had a large number of students participating in both 4th and 5th grade last year, I had to schedule separate times for the children to give their oral presentations to me for grading. They were available at the fair to answer questions or give demonstrations to the judges and the fair attendees if requested.

Teachers will need the Fourth or Fifth Grade Standards Rubric (or both).

Judges will need the Judges Criteria Scoring Sheets.

Optional video camera or web cam.

All completed Science Fair Projects.

Procedures

1. Have students select a time to give their presentations. I scheduled them in my plan book.

2. As their time comes up students will give their presentations while the teacher grades the projects based on the rubric.

Fair Procedures

1. Our fair was scheduled in conjunction with our open house in the spring. The afternoon of the fair we had the students bring their projects to our MPR (Multi- Purpose Room) and set up any demonstrations so they were ready to go.

2. Between 2:30 ( 10 minutes after our dismissal time) and 5:30 we were open to judges only. As there were about 170 projects, it took each judge about 2 hours to go through all of the projects. It took much longer than I had originally anticipated.

3. Between 5:30 and 6:30 (Before the fair was open to the public) a fellow teacher and I tallied the judges' sheets. We took the top 50 as we had 50 ribbons to give away.

4. At 6:30 the fair was open to the public. So that we could get a head count of the number of people attending and a survey of continuing to have a science fair in the future, we required all guests to sign in. We had two open doors and student monitors at each door.  Midway through the fair at about 7:30 we made an announcement and gave out the ribbons. The kids put their ribbons on their boards so that everyone could take pictures.  We had a turn out of about 400 parents, grandparents, friends, neighbors, and siblings. The largest open house turn out ever.

 5. The day after open house we always have a "walk through" in which all the classes go from classroom to classroom to see what the other classes have done for open house, so we left the science fair up over night so all the students could see our great work the next day.

Assessment

Assessment is based on the Fourth Grade Standards Rubric and the Fifth Grade Standards Rubric.  I give the children a percentage score based on the number of items on the rubric they got credit for, divided by the number of items on the rubric. This will give you a decimal and therefore a percentage,  and hence you can equate it for a letter grade, which is what the kids and their parents want.

I use the Language Arts standards portion of the Fifth Grade Rubric and the Fourth Grade Rubric, as the Language Arts and Oral Presentation portion of the grade in the grading section of each rubric, and then the Science Standards to evaluate the project for the grading section of the rubric (located at the end of each rubric). I average the two final scores on these rubrics for an overall grade. I also take the time to go over with the students where their weaknesses are so that in the future they can spend more time on these areas.

 The Grading Rubric therefore has a dual purpose, both check off standards and provide a letter grade. Depending on what your grade level and school do, you have access to both types of grading.  My grading scale is the traditional one of 100 - 97 = A+, 96 - 94 = A, 90-93 =A-, 89 - 87 = B+, 84 -86 = B, 83 -80  = B-, 79-77 = C+, 76 - 74 = C, 73 - 70 =C-, 69 - 67 = D+, 66 - 64 = D, 60 - 63 = D-. Anything lower of course in an F. I had only two students score F's.

The judges scoring is used for ribbon purposes only.

Ultimately what you, the parents, and the kids end up with is a) a ribbon if they scored well with the judges, b) a letter grade, c) and standards checked off for your records and report cards.  

Extension

You will need to adapt the actual science fair set up to whatever works at your school. I got special permission to use our MPR as normally we have our PTA meetings there on the night of open house. If you do not have a large indoor space, consider using an extra classroom, your classroom, a nearby structure. Use your imagination. This was the most successful unit in science I have ever taught in terms of both student and parent participation, and getting the parents to the school!

Have fun with it!