By Deanne Benson
Head of School
The scientists of tomorrow, right here at Lesley Ellis, participated in our annual Lesley Ellis Science and Engineering Fair this spring. Once the experiments were concluded, the builds completed, data analyzed and the presentation boards wrapped up, all students in Grades 5-8 presented their experiments to a panel of judges. Some students’ projects qualified to go on to the Massachusetts Region IV Science and Engineering Fair in mid-April.
At Lesley Ellis we believe in the power of science. STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) is the language of our new and rapidly changing digital economy. Students in the science fair begin with a hypothesis and conduct experiments that test their theory or solve engineering problems with a real-world build. Then they create a presentation to tell the rest of us about what they learned and discovered.
In this way, our students learn and practice hands-on scientific inquiry skills, research, reflection and public presentation skills, which are intrinsic to our curriculum. The Science Fair is not just an extracurricular at Lesley Ellis because we already know the secret: Science. Is. Cool.
The following two videos are examples of annual Science Fair projects