TJ’s AP Science students head to Samuels Elementary to serve as judges for their science fair.
photo by Rachel Wilson
On Wednesday, January 27th, Samuels Elementary School held a science fair where students from TJ’s AP Biology and AP Physics classes were invited to judge the young scientists’ hard work.
The judges arrived at Samuels at 8:00am to enjoy some free breakfast while they received information on how the science fair would run. Each judge received an official “Samuels Science Fair” nametag and a clipboard with scoring sheets for each student’s project.
The judges split up into groups of two or three and went to the classes of the students they were assigned to judge and pulled out a group of four or five and took them to the gym, where every project was displayed. The students would then explain their projects to their judges. The projects were judged based on the creativity of the subject, the presentation of the project, whether or not the student followed all the rules, if the project was the student’s own work, and the time and work put into the project.
Jeff and Danielle Schreiber, Samuels PTA members and sponsors for the science fair, organized the event. “The Science Fair is a great opportunity for kids to use the scientific process to answer questions that they may have thought about or research something to learn how it works. We are always amazed at the ideas the kids come up with each year,” Jeff said.
This was the first year that TJ students judged the Samuels Science Fair. “We were really happy this year to have 22 TJ’s AP Science students serve as judges of the Science Fair. The judges from TJ did an excellent job working with over 200 Samuels students. They evaluated the effort that was put into the Science Fair projects and assessed the presentation of the posters. This year’s Science Fair was a success. We hope to have the TJ students back again next year,” said Schreiber.
The TJ judges seemed to enjoy working with the young scientists as well. “The kids were a lot of fun; I judged some of the 5th graders’ work and was really surprised at some of the projects. One girl that stood out to me did a project on yeast, and I was truly amazed at how good it was, and I even learned a few things from it,” said, AP Physics Student, Alexandra Kaufhold.
The students with the best projects were recognized at a special science fair award ceremony. “We give awards to each grade level 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and a combined 1st grade with Kindergarten (although we had no kindergarteners this year). For each grade level, we give out 1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place and Honorable Mention awards. In addition, we give out Wizard Awards, which are for kids who had a great idea, but maybe didn’t get too high of an overall score. We gave out 42 awards this year,” said Schreiber.
The awards given out were the following:
1st grade –
Honorable Mentions: Cooper Banks – “Dried Beans” and Paul Valtierrez – “The Exploding Volcano”
2nd grade –
1st Place: Lily Ornelas and Nebria Duren – “How Much Water Can A Diaper Hold?” and Cristian Stancu – “Sink or Float”
2nd Place: Enrique Engenio-Tellez and Gilberto Sandoval-Miranda – “Por que Erupcion los Volcanes?”
3rd Place: Kyle McPheron – “Fightened Grasshopper”
Honorable Mentions: Taryn Martin – “Naked Egg,” Uriel Rojo-Mendoza – “Hot and Cold Water,” Rheanna Valiare – “Disappearing Colors”
3rd grade –
1st Place: Dorian Thomas – “Understanding Volcanoes”
2nd Place: Macey Ciardella and Paige Venrick – “How Does Our Garden Grow?” and Maddy Ciardella and Delyla Posey – “Germier Than a 3rd Grader?”
3rd Place: Aidan Payne – “See a Sunset”
Honorable Mention: Micaela Stewart and Monica Flores – “Plants”
4th Grade –
1st Place: Mariah Bradford – “Sea Monkeys,” Dakshitha Pemma – “How Do Lungs Supply Oxygen to the Body,” and Keaton Scheiber – “The Capacitor”
2nd Place: Jordan Laudan – “Thunderstorms”
3rd Place: Kayla Gibson – “An ‘Egg’cellent Experiment” and Joshua Pichardo – “How to Make a Potato Clock”
Honorable Mentions: Z’HaiTae Duren – “Cells” and Denisse Garcia and Ariana Head-Cardena – “Dry Ice and Water”
5th Grade –
1st Place: Alyssa Vazquez – “What Fluffs Your Bread?”
2nd Place: John Turner – “Smelly Smell Smells”
3rd Place David Gilliam – “Inside the Earth”
Honorable Mentions: Jose Navarra Arriola – “First One to Rot is a Rotten Banana” and Ryan Failano – “The Precipitation Process”
Wizard Awards –
Christopher Jolas – “The freezing Creek”
Amanda Kerr – “How a Harp Works”
N’Dea Sweat – “Why is the Sky Blue?”
Zoe Bogle – “Simple Moving Machine”
Sara Gebretsadik – “How are Crayons Made?”
Genesis Jacobs – “Forest Canopy and Below”
Aaron Stottlemyer – “The Compass”
Mario Villalobos-Sanchez – “Cocinada con Energia Solar”
Jazz Write – “Homemade Instrument”
After the judges finished looking over and scoring all of their students, they were offered a free lunch and time to socialize and discuss each of the projects that stood out to them. The TJ students left around 11:00am. Then later in the day, an assembly was held, where each winner received their award and proper recognition.
