Science Fair

Haverhill has hosted a Science Fair for the past six years, 2006 - 2011. The Science Fair is about 4th and 5th grade students coming up with questions to investigate, developing a hypothesis, design an experiment, collecting data, and analyzing the results.

The Science Fair is about full inquiry; it’s the process children use to develop knowledge and what they use to understand scientific ideas. It about students getting engaged in scientific oriented questions, coming up with their own ideas, and seeing how those questions lend themselves to investigations where they can gather and use data to answer their questions. The students use their observations, they formulation answers to scientific questions, and they evaluate their answers knowing that new evidence may change their thinking and they may revise their question and head in a new direction.

One of the greatest pieces of the Science Fair is that the children get to communicate and support their answers with evidence to the science community.

There are many benefits for the students participating in the Science Fair. This is a long term project – ten weeks - which allows students to work through all the steps of the scientific process, requiring a deeper intellectual engagement in their topic and getting some real research experience and time to explore and delve into their experiment. They construct their own knowledge and they benefit from developing the processing skills that are integral to this part of science. And they gain tremendous confidence from seeing through their project and becoming their own experts in their area of interest.

Students have the opportunity to attend after school and/or Saturday workshops. The Pfizer scientists also attend and are available to help review student questions and supply whatever is needed to assist students in their investigations.