Chillum Elementary honors its science fair winners

Thursday, March 30, 2006

The Chillum Elementary School has held a science fair for the last eight years, but March 22 was the first time winners were honored during an evening program held at the school.

At the event, winners awarded certificates while honorable mentions were given to several others. The final projects by the award-winning students were put on display.

‘‘Ours is an experimental science fair. We want [the winners] to come up with their own problems,” said Ted Mavritte, the science resource teacher who runs the fair.

In the classroom, students are given questions to answer or a procedure to follow, but for the science fair, they must formulate their own hypotheses and procedure.

The process starts at the beginning of the year and Mavritte gives the pupils, in grades third through sixth, a timeline.

They look to the world around them for ideas, and some try to answer questions about the longevity of batteries and food.

A phone call from his family’s native Guayana inspired fifth-grader Nicholas DeNieunkerk.

He said when he heard the heavy chairs in his grandparents’ house floated during a flood, his curiosity was piqued because he had seen the chairs and thought they were too heavy to float.

He won first place for an experiment that tested how the density of water affects flotation when altered by the presence of substances like salt.

‘‘ I’m into art, but I like science too,” DeNieunkerk said.

Although students like Nicholas has time to decide on a career, the goal of the science fair is to give students a taste for the subject.

Sheila Jefferson, the school’s principal said, ‘‘We encourage you to increase your science knowledge and consider a career in science.”

Steering children towards the sciences was also on the mind of the keynote speaker, Richard Hallion, founding curator of the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Science Museum.

He drew upon a speech Norman R. Augustine, retired chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin, gave last fall before the House of Representative’s Committee on Science. It focused on how America can be more competitive in science and technology.

Hallion said he was ‘‘very impressed” and ‘‘tremendously interested in the range of subjects” covered by the students’ experiments.

Hallion attended Chillum Elementary School from 1957 to 1959, and even recognized his old classroom.

‘‘When I came here in 1957, [the U.S.] was facing a crisis in science education,” he said, recalling the period after the Soviets launched Sputnik.

He said he sees the country facing a similar challenge today, one, he said, that can be overcome by ‘‘drawing on the strengths we traditionally have — our diversity.”

Before students begin their experiments, Mavritte said he holds a workshop for parents to give them an idea of what will be expected of their children.

Parent participation is key, Mavritte said. ‘‘Most of the projects that were winners came from kids whose parents came out to the workshop.”

Patricia Black-Thomas, whose daughter Tiara Thomas, a fourth-grader, took second place, said she was very enthusiastic about the workshop.

She described Mavritte as an ‘‘excellent teacher” and lamented that more parents did not attend.

The judging took place during the first week of March and the judges were given a long list of 30 to 40 criteria. Among other things they had to consider the quality of a student’s hypothesis and the procedure followed in order to arrive at the conclusion.

The school has a partnership with the University of Maryland and Sharon Simson, a research professor, works with Chillum’s students throughout the year.

Simson said the judges interviewed students and had them discuss their projects without consulting their final display to test what was learned.

She said she found the judging difficult because the projects were ‘‘really good.”

Hallion agreed, saying,”It’s real science.”