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Teacher Resources

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As part of its effort to help strengthen science education, Science Buddies provides a number of teacher resources. These tools may also be of interest to many parents:

New! Science Project Enrichment Tools are tried-and-true methods from teachers and other dependable resources that will help your students reap the full benefits from their science fair projects.
New! Teacher's Guide to Science Projects is designed to help teachers prepare, organize, and manage a science project program in the classroom.
Available Now! A Guide to Planning a Science Fair is an invaluable step-by-step guide loaded with tools, tips, and tricks for those teachers who want to offer their students the benefits of a full science fair event.
New! The Science Fair Project Grading Rubrics consist of teacher-vetted rubrics for each step of a science fair project from grading the question to evaluating the display board.
New! Our Scientific Method classroom poster is also available in PDF format.
New! Sign up for the Science Buddies Quarterly Newsletter and be the first to hear about great new project ideas, teacher resources, changes to our website, and much more!
The Science Fair Schedule Worksheet will help you plan and schedule science fair assignments.
The Topic Selection Wizard is an interactive questionnaire to help science fair participants narrow their area of interest.
Printable copies of our Science Fair Project Guide webpages are perfect handouts for students.
Ask an Expert is an online bulletin board you and/or students can use to ask science fair and/or career-oriented questions of our volunteer advisors, all of whom are professional scientists or engineers.

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A Word About Permissions

Individuals may download material on this page for their own use. If you are a teacher, you may download material on this page and make copies for classroom use at your school only. You may freely distribute it on paper to your students, parents, and mentors, if any. You may NOT post these materials on the Web or republish them in any form. We encourage you to tell other schools about the material, but we request that they download the information themselves. All other rights are reserved by Science Buddies.

We Ask that Downloaders Please Send Us an Email

To help us improve our material, we ask that you send us an email after you have used our downloads or directed a class to use the Topic Selection Wizard. We have a strict privacy policy, and none of the information you provide will be given to third parties. In your email, please include:

Your name
The Science Buddies Resource(s) you used in your classroom
Any comments you have about how we might improve the material

Click here to send us an email: scibuddy@sciencebuddies.org
Thank you very much!

Free Scientific Method Classroom Poster!

This free classroom poster offers a great visual overview of the six steps of the scientific method as described on the Science Buddies website.
Request a free copy for your classroom today! There are no shipping and handling charges and supplies are limited.

Available Now!

Teacher's Guide to Planning a Science Fair. An invaluable step-by-step guide loaded with tools, tips, and tricks for those teachers who want to offer their students the benefits of a full science fair event.

Feedback

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Science Project Enrichment Tools New!

Science Buddies wants you and your students to get the most out of the science fair project experience, and we're confident that these Science Project Enrichment Tools will help. Each tool features grade-level applicability, implementation instructions, and direct benefits for your students. Please visit each link, some of which include supplementary tools for you to download and print for use in your classroom.

Family Science Night: Show students and their families that science is fun! By setting up several science activities for everyone in the family, parents will experience the type of hands-on, inquiry-based learning that their children are receiving. This tool also fosters interaction between parents, teachers, and students.
Extra Credit: Boost science fair attendance by providing extra credit to students who bring a family member or mentor to the fair.
Science Fair Information Night: This tool goes hand in hand with the Science Buddies Teacher's Guide to Science Projects. Hold a Science Fair Information Night for parents at your school and present this dynamic PowerPoint presentation, which explains the process, goals, parent-teacher involvement, and student benefits.
In-Class Science Project: Employ scientific inquiry in your classroom by guiding students through a hands-on trial run of a single classroom science project before they tackle their own.
Black Box: Give students assignments related to their science projects, grade them according to set rubrics, and then offer students the chance to improve at each step.
Science Fair Passports: Organize a passport activity to increase fair attendance and encourage visiting students to enjoy learning from the fair, communicating with fair participants, and being inspired by their peers' projects.
Peer Review: Have students interview each other about their science fair projects to help them build confidence, enhance presentation skills, and learn to evaluate and implement feedback.
Project Clinic: Level the playing field for students who do not have access to knowledgeable mentors who can assist them in conceptualizing and completing their science projects.
More, coming soon!

Teacher's Guide to Science Projects New!

The Teacher's Guide to Science Projects was developed to provide teachers with everything they need to assign, manage, and evaluate a science project program in the classroom, including lots of tips to make a science project a fun educational experience. While this guide was designed for teachers who have never assigned a science project, it also offers a variety of tools and tips that seasoned teachers will find useful. Some of the key elements included in the guide:

Benefits of a Science Project: An explanation of the benefits of doing a science project and how they map to the science education standards.
Teacher Timeline: Steps to help teachers guide students and plan additional activities.
Safety Guidelines: How and when teachers should review student science projects for safety concerns.
Student Science Project Schedule: A timeline for students to follow with reading and homework assignments.
A Parent Guide to Science Projects: A letter introducing parents to the science project, plus tips on how to effectively help a student on a project.
Printable Assignment Worksheets: for key steps of the science project

Download Teacher's Guide to Science Projects (pdf)

A Guide to Planning a Science Fair Available Now!

Introducing the 2008 Science Buddies Guide to Planning a Science Fair!

Planning your school's science fair? New to the process or just looking for a more organized approach? We've developed the documents below to help you put on a successful science fair, from start to finish. The documents go hand in hand and offer many options that you can tailor to your school's fair.

A Guide to Planning a Science Fair (pdf) This step-by-step guide walks you through every step of planning your school science fair—from setting goals for the fair, to recruiting and training volunteers and judges, to announcing the winners. The companion judging documents are also referenced throughout and are available for download below.
Judging Guide (pdf) This guide includes an introduction to the teacher, as well as thorough instructions to print out for the judges' training on the day of the fair. Features include grade-level expectations, responsibilities, and scoring guidelines. This guide will also prepare them for using the Judging Scorecards below. After reviewing the descriptions below, select and print the scorecard that you feel is most appropriate for your students.
Judging Scorecard (pdf) This scorecard assumes students understand dependent, independent, and controlled variables. If this scorecard is the appropriate target for your fair, please print and hand out copies to the judges on the day of the fair.
Judging Scorecard: Basic (pdf) This scorecard assumes students understand the concept of a fair test, but do not have knowledge of dependent, independent, and controlled variables. If this scorecard is the appropriate target for your fair, please print and hand out copies to the judges on the day of the fair.
Judging Scorecard: Elementary (pdf) This scorecard makes few assumptions about student knowledge. They should be able to follow the basic steps of an experiment and make observations to answer a question. Advanced students will be able to make measurements. If this scorecard is the appropriate target for your fair, please print and hand out copies to the judges on the day of the fair.
Project Tracking Spreadsheet Sample (xls) This spreadsheet includes a sample, as well as a template that can be modified and used to track your students' projects, from registration through the judging process.
Science Fair Certificate Sample (Word doc) This is a sample template of a Science Fair award certificate.

Science Fair Project Grading Rubrics New!

Grading rubrics are an important component of the science project to ensure that all projects are graded fairly and on the same fundamental concepts. Science Buddies has developed a set of teacher-vetted rubrics in PDF format for each step of the science project as detailed on the Science Buddies website. The rubrics cover:

Scientific Method Classroom Poster New!

In partnership with Seagate Technology, Science Buddies has developed a 26"x36" classroom poster providing an overview of the six steps of the scientific method as described on the Science Buddies website. We have limited quantities of this poster available to teachers free of charge and there are no shipping and handling charges. Please allow 4-6 weeks for shipping.

We also have a PDF version of this poster available for anyone interested in printing their own copies. For student handouts, printing on legal-size paper (8.5 x 14 inches) works quite nicely.

Request a Free Poster

Download Scientific Method Poster (pdf)

Science Fair Schedule Worksheet

This worksheet is a handy tool to help construct a schedule for science fair assignment due dates. In contrast to the timelines and schedules included in our Teacher's Guide to Science Projects, these worksheets are not tied directly to the resources in our online Science Project Guide and can be helpful for teachers who are planning a science project but might be using materials other than those provided on our website. It has three sections:

Holiday/Work Day Planner. This worksheet lets you summarize all your holidays and teacher workdays in one spot to assist in scheduling the science fair assignments. If you have a good school calendar handy, you can skip this step.
Science Fair Assignment Worksheet. This worksheet helps you plan when student assignments should be due.
Student/Parent Schedule. Transfer the dates from the worksheet to this schedule and you can distribute it to students and parents. We highly recommend that parents receive a copy of the schedule. You may also want to add a permission slip and/or notification of the student's project topic.

Download Science Fair Schedule Worksheet (Word doc): This document offers a more generic schedule which can easily be integrated with any science project resources.

Download Teacher's Guide to Science Projects (pdf): This document includes a schedule that is fully integrated with the content on the Science Buddies website.

Topic Selection Wizard

You can access the Topic Selection Wizard from the Science Fair Project Question page. Try it!

Printable Copies of our Science Fair Project Guide Webpages

Each of the webpages of the Science Fair Project Guide can be printed using the Printable Version button at the top of the screen. We are still developing the PDF versions of the recently redesigned Science Fair Project Guide pages and we hope to have them available in the next few weeks.

Printable Scientific Method Handout (pdf)

Ask an Expert

You can access Ask an Expert from here, or by clicking on the blue Ask an Expert tab at the top of the page. Try it! We can help with student, teacher, or parent questions about science fairs or science fair projects.

The Classroom Scientists Program

Please Note: The Classroom Scientists Program will not be in operation during the 2007-2008 school year.

The Classroom Scientists Program, formerly called our Ask an Expert Mentoring Program, offers personalized help to smaller groups of twenty to thirty students as they complete individual science fair projects. The program is structured with a schedule, assignments and a final goal of completing a science fair project and entering it in a local or regional science fair. Five to ten Experts will work with a small group of twenty to thirty students to offer guidance, feedback and review the work. The objective is to help a group of students by developing a fun online science community where students can go for support on their projects that will ultimately help them develop a better understanding of science and the scientific method.

The Expert group will be comprised of science professionals and top high school science students. All mentoring or "meetings" will take place on private, password protected discussion boards. An online orientation guide prepares Experts for the program. It covers things like how to use the online message board forum effectively, roles and responsibilities, and gives examples of scenarios from prior participants.

Generally, the program ends when the Investigator enters the finished project in a local science fair. If the Investigator qualifies for a regional or state science fair, additional fine tuning is encouraged to polish the project so that it presents its best face. Most Investigators are amazed by what they can accomplish with a little help from e-mentors.

The size of the Classroom Scientists Program is very limited, and you should know that it requires a good deal of teacher support to be successful. Most spaces for the coming year are already filled. Send us an email: scibuddy@sciencebuddies.org if you are interested in the program.

Presenting Science Buddies to Others

If you have a need to present the Science Buddies resources to students, parents, or other teachers and you don't have a live Internet connection, you can use our PowerPoint presentation. This 6 MB PowerPoint file contains screenshots from our website.

Download Science Buddies PowerPoint (ppt)

If you would like a one-page flyer to give to students, send home to parents, pass out at a school open house, or post, you can use this general flyer. This 58 KB PDF file contains a brief description of all the tools and resources offered by Science Buddies. A few versions of this flyer are available that give recognition to sponsors who have underwritten support of Science Buddies for a specific region.

Download Science Buddies General Flyer (pdf)