Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Dear Science Buddies,

First, I'd like to thank you for providing a place to ask questions. Second, I found your site last year and was able to locate much needed answers in your clearly written and laid out "how to" section. This allowed both of my 5th grade students to go on to regionals and receive 1st place in their respective categories.

BACKGROUND: These two girls have decided to team up and continue, for the 3rd year, one of their projects. All of the prior trial subjects were adults. This year, they want to test their hypothesis on children. Last year's project took eight months to complete, and even after substantial cutting, I believe the project remained too large for a single student. She ran 54 trials (47 trials were usable) testing three reading methods (independent variables) on three different populations. She had two dependent variables. I have no background in science, but it seems to me that she actually ran multiple projects in one.

QUESTION #1: The explanation about "teams" states that the project must be more substantial than an individual project. Does the following plan appear to meet that requirement?

They are planning on reducing the populations being tested from 3 to 2; increasing the independent variables from 3 to 4; (this addresses components tested in year 1 & 2) and retaining the 2 dependent variables. They will both test half of each population and later collect data together. Each student will process the data from one of the populations and create representative charts and graphs. They will both contribute to the write-up and creation of the display board, with one student doing the majority of the hand written portion and the other transferring most of the information to Word and Microsoft.

QUESTION #2: The rules state that "continuing" projects are fine, but each year’s project must be different. The girls want to repeat last year's project on children with minimal changes. Is this enough of a change? If not, what would be more appropriate?

Question #3: Each year, I provide less direct instruction and more guidance, but I am not certain if I will be doing too much for a 6th grade student if I were to provide the data collection FORMS they need for their project, and check their figures & grammar.*** --See #4 below. (And yes, they do note assistance received on the Project Summary and Abstract.)

QUESTION #4: Background/ Research
I have taken the students to the public library and CSU library each year so they may gather additional background data. ***The READING project has little to no prior research so I have brainstormed with librarians and continued looking for related articles for her to read. I’ve found a few in medical journals that are above her reading level and touching on the subject peripherally, but nothing on point. I’ve also interviewed, via telephone, a professional who is using a similar reading technique (the professional is elderly and hard of hearing AND the student is hard of hearing) and sales people who sell items that are remotely similar to her project, but have been unsuccessful to date. (During and after the calls I share the information gleaned.) Besides “respectfully,” how should she respond to judges who are certain she should have more research to support her project?

Thank you in advance for any help you are able to give.

Laurie

Hi,

Congratulations to you and your students for their win at the science fair. It sounds like your encouragement and support for the project was a key element of the success for this project. I’m happy to hear that the information on the Science Buddies website was helpful

Here are answers to your questions.

1. The plan is more than sufficient to quality for a team project. More than one independent variable and multiple trials will require a lot of work; and the data analysis sounds like it is very complex.

2. Your second question is a little more difficult. As a science fair judge, I have seen projects done one year that are good, but contain substantial flaws, and are not winning projects. The next year, the student may redo the project perfectly and enter a top winning project. The students have obviously learned from their experience. I have seen other winning projects that are continued the next year with a new set of questions and new experiments and this is an excellent approach also. Your students won in their category and are planning to repeat the same project, using children as subjects rather than adults. This is a worthwhile project, but will not be considered as original as it was this year. It would be better if the students could improve on the experimental design and write the next chapter on their studies, rather than repeat the same experiment, although working with children is going to be much more challenging that working with adults. The project is probably going to be judged by the same judges next year, and they will be looking for something new and original.

I am definitely not suggesting that the students not do this project. They should be able to use the experience they gained in developing their experiment and analyzing the data to do a second excellent project. Were there any problems with the experiment that could be addressed in the new project? Did the outcome of the project suggest any new questions that could be answered by doing another experiment? You have not included any details about the project, but if you want post some details, I would be happy to make some additional suggestions.

3. The assistance you are proposing is not too much. Helping with forms, checking grammar, going to the library, and providing endless encouragement are what adults are supposed to do. You will find that your students will be able to work more independently this year now that they understand how to do a science project.


4. It sounds like you have done a good job of looking for background reading information. It’s possible that the CSU library did not have the right journals. Your students are not too young to start reading scientific journal articles on their topic. They should be familiar with the work that has been published in their area. The articles in the medical articles may seem complicated, but your students should be able to understand the abstracts and understand the materials and methods sections. You could help by reading and explaining any articles that you can find. If there are really no articles on the topic, your students should include a review of the current literature on similar topics and state that there are no published references on the exact subject. I can sympathize with the judge who inquired about references; when there is no bibliography included with a project, the science fair judge may not think that the student has tried to find anything. This is obviously not true for this project, but it is important to include some sort of bibliography as this is a required section for the project write-up. If there is a bibliography included, the judge will not be concerned about whether or not more research should have been done, but your student should be prepared to answer questions about what information was obtained in the background reading.

What is the topic? I probably don’t have access to the right journals for a reading project, but I would be happy to look and see if I can find any published references.

I hope this helps.

Donna Hardy

Dear Donna Hardy,

Thank you for your reply.

It is difficult to know how much info is too much and how much isn’t enough. I hope this is what you want. . . .

2. IMPROVE EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: There were quite a few weaknesses in the project the 1st year, some due to my lack of experience and others due to development (4th grade) of the students. Many of the obvious ones were addressed the second year. This year the girls are reviewing their variables, video tape of prior tests, the results and I downloaded several of the California State Science Fair Project Summaries to help them improve their Project Summary and Abstract page.

In doing so, they have decided to make corrections to their variables, script for the testing process, adjustments due to age of this year's participants and are adding some components to the final presentation. For instance, they are now looking beyond Grade Level & Readability to Syllabication, Number of Repeated Words, and Sentence Structure within the reading passages. They are planning a rotation system of the passages read during each reading method to neutralize any remaining difference/s that would artificially affect the scores. They will be combining the data from the prior two years to have ready to compare to this year's data. Essentially, they are looking for anything that will improve or streamline the process. And, they are looking around town for a mentor (optometrist, reading specialist, or someone who has strong skills in creating accurate tests). –Is this enough of a change, or do they still need to do something else?

WRITE THE NEXT CHAPTER: Maybe I am being too concrete, but I’m not sure what this means. In fourth grade, the student’s goal was to learn how to help children who struggle with reading read better. I insisted she spend a time learning more about the subject and practice her testing skills on adults before she began testing children. This year she will be testing the reading methods on 3-5 graders in the general population and 3-5 graders in the special needs community (with vision processing errors, ADHD, or developmental delays). –They are both ready. The special needs community trusts them. The time was well spent; they have been asked to come back and test children. We have all learned a lot!
NEW QUESTIONS: She has many, many new/ good questions she wants to test. It is difficult to keep her focused on a few at a time. Light sources, angle of reading surface, transparencies, longer passages, degrees of difficulty, combination of materials, testing large groups. . . .

DETAILS ABOUT PROJECT: She tested four reading methods on three populations: 1. No Stress, 2. Moderately Stressed, & 3. Mildly Stressed. Full Blocking consistently provided better results across the populations with regard to errors made and was equal to Eyes Only in the NO Stress population and substantially better in the two stressed populations. Example below.

Moderately Stressed/ Struggling Readers:
Words read per minute given the following directions, “Please read at a normal speed.”
Errors made per words read (last one hasn’t been changed from “mistakes per minute”)

Reading Method Eyes Only Full Blocking Partial Blocking Touch the Words
Margin of error 12.6% 12.6% 14.6% 25%
Words read per minute 29.5 69 40 40
Error made every XX words read 12 26 8 **12.1**

**Touching the Words, struggling readers made **12.1 mistakes per minute**

4. Sorry, I mislead you into thinking there wasn’t a bibliography. There was, but except for one article, it only touches on the project peripherally (dealing with fonts & point size) or wasn’t what anyone would consider good research (dealing with various blocking & highlighting devices.) This year, they can supplement it with work showing the correlation between reading speed and comprehension, research discussing the use of slant boards, and I can explain the articles discussing saccades and peripheral vision.

A) If I explain medical articles, how do they document them? They will not have read them and I will only be explaining the pertinent portions.

PUBLISHED REFERENCE SUBJECT sources regarding the use of "Full Blocking, a Movable Window, or a Reading Window" while reading (specifically reading a paper product, but others would be useful) would be greatly appreciated!

This seems like a lot of information. Sometimes I forget how much time and work is invested in these projects! Too bad I have no background in science; it would have made everything so much easier. I really have to plan carefully over the summer to work it all in during the school year.

Laurie

Hi Laurie,

Thanks for your additional explanation on this project. . This subject is definitely out of my area of expertise, as I am a chemist, but I do have lots of experience in doing science projects. I did a quick literature search and can understand the problem you had in finding published papers on learning to read.

I understand now that the students are testing 4 different reading methods with 3 different levels of stress. This project is very challenging. Since the original intent of the project was to study reading in children, then the year spent in testing the methods on adults was a preliminary study for the definitive project with children as the test subjects. When writing up this year’s results, your students can include a brief history about the results obtained in 4th and 5th grades and explain what is different about this year’s project. It sounds like there are quite a few revisions to last year’s methods, including syllabication, repeated words, and sentence structure in addition to the age of the test subjects. If your students can explain this, then the science fair judges will know that this is a new project, not just a repeat of last year’s project.

Finding a local mentor such as an optometrist or reading specialist is an excellent idea. It’s always a good idea to have a subject matter expert. You can also send e-mail messages to authors of papers and ask questions or request a referral to a local contact (although you may not get an answer). You could also contact the education department at the CSU campus and see if there is a professor available to give advice or more background information.

In a science fair project, it is important to follow the scientific method and do a carefully controlled experiment. The Science Buddies website has very helpful information on this.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ndex.shtml

I recommend that you go back and make sure the students are following all of the steps. Have they formulated a new question for this year? What is their hypothesis? What controls are they going to include in the experiment? How are they going to analyze the results? If you want to post the question, hypothesis, and experimental method, I would be happy to make comments and ask additional questions about the experiment. This is a good time to review everything before they start the project.

Can you give me the citation for one or two of the references you found? I am interested to see what type of literature there is in this field.

If you find medical papers on the subject, I would give them to the students and ask them to try to read them. Scientific papers may have long words in them, but the writing style is usually straightforward and clear and the definitions of the words can be found in an on-line dictionary. For the purposes of a science fair project, usually you just need to understand the abstract and the materials and methods sections. This is really an advanced project, so if your students can’t understand the papers, they will benefit from the information even if you have to explain it to them. The students can include the articles in their bibliography.

Donna Hardy

Dear Donna,

They need some solid research on reading while using: 1. Slant boards & 2. blocking techniques; the rest of the areas are covered. Here are a few of the sources they'll be using this year:
The Science of Word Recognition by Kevin Larson found in Advanced Reading Technology, Microsoft Corporation, July 2004
Reading in a Moving Text-window: Differences Between Fast and Slow Adult Readers by Carsten & Christoffersen found in the Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, Volume 32, Issue 3, September 1988, 141-151
Training improves reading speed in peripheral vision: Is it due to attention? located in the Journal of Vision (2010) 10(6):18, 1-15
The effect of letter spacing on reading speed in central and peripheral vision by Chung ST found in the NCBI, Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci (2002) Apr; 43(4): 1270-6

Their project was turned down by the county because of its inclusion of children with special needs/ struggling readers so they shifted to an idea they had slated for future testing. (I will help them work out the kinks on their original idea so they may resubmit in the future. However, due to time constrictions, they won't have time to work it out this year.) Thier new hypothesis is: The goal of our experiment is to determine if the combinations of a 22 degree slant board and blocking techniques improve reading fluency in 3rd - 5th grade students.
--Their wording improved after they reviewed the samples from the state science fair!

I'll have them go through the Science Buddies section recommended to make certain they have included the correct steps and perform a fair test. --good idea to check every year

How sad is it that I don't know the difference, but here goes. You stated this is an advanced project, but I'm not sure why it is so. She chose the subject based on her interests, laid out a plan based on the scientific method and has added something new each year. It takes a long time to locate, test, & process the data, but there is only one complicated part (2 formulas) to the process. The hardest thing is locating acceptable research. How should she have put together a science fair project? What makes it advanced and is there a way to change it to a regular project? I am sure both girls would rather do something simpler, but I don't know what suggestions to make....

Thank you again for your assistance.

Laurie