We all know that Science plays an integral part in helping our students develop both academically and socially. Through practical hands-on problem solving in real-world situations, we're teaching our students valuable transferrable skills such as confidence, curiosity, critical thinking and collaboration to provide them with limitless opportunities once they graduate from BIS HCMC.
One such way we are doing this is through the annual Secondary Science Fair. Over a period of 3 weeks our Secondary students are tasked with designing, researching, planning, carrying out and analysing results from their very own Science projects. These projects are then presented to a vast audience of peers, primary students, parents, teachers and a panel of judges made up of professional scientists!
The types of research questions our students came up with included:
- How does the mass of yeast affect the volume of carbon dioxide produced for making bread?
- Is the growth of Elodea affected by fish?
- How do different hair conditioners affect the mass and thickness of wool (as a model for hair)?
- Which type of fruit generates the most electricity?
- Which method of brewing coffee affects human reaction time the most?
- How do the beats per minute of music affect memory?
As you can see from the comments below, the students gained valuable skills from this 'real-world' project:
- “We were very independent and grown up! Like a real scientist we created our own experiment, didn’t need to ask for much help from teachers, and learned an awful lot about what great planning, analytical and evaluative thinking is.” – Callum Rasmussen
- “I really enjoyed the Science Fair.. I got so much more confident speaking to others as we were visited by each audience.” - Tracy Le
- “I learned how to be a better presenter of scientific ideas; we don’t need a script, we just need to interact and explain everything we did to show off all our hard work and scientific ideas!” – Janet Ngo
- “It was a chance to show what we are passionate about.” – Nguyen Huynh
The Competition
The competition was tough! All of the students’ projects were extremely impressive and testament to their hard work and dedication to exploring novel scientific ideas.
Nha Bach, one of our professional scientists who kindly volunteered as a judge, commented on the standard of work produced. “I was so impressed by the standard of the presentations and the quality of the scientific understanding of the students. If students can achieve this in Year 8, they will go on to do great things when they are older! Thank you for inviting me!”
The runners up and winners of the competition will be announced in the end of term assembly. Well done to every Year 8 team, and thank you to all the teachers, science technicians, as well as Mary Chambers, Nha Bach, Hannah Clapham who visited BIS HCMC to judge the projects.
Ms Danielle Fountain, Head of Biology
#STEAM