By Lee Bizzini, El Tejon Teacher

The 2011 fourth through eighth grade El Tejon Unified School District science fair did not fail to impress. A large crowd filed through the gym of El Tejon school with comments of amazement as they studied the display of 230 projects.

Each year during the month of January, local households set aside other activities as their students do research, prepare a hypothesis, conduct experiments, and arrive at conclusions about their theories. They are learning about the scientific method—a valuable lesson taught by El Tejon science teachers.

Science fair projects allow students to practice scientific thinking and problem-solving, improvise when a procedure doesn’t work out as predicted, and present science findings to others. Students strengthen math skills through analyzing and graphing data; reading comprehension skills by doing complicated background research; and creative problem solving skills throughout the process.

Volunteer judges were Diane Cosko, D.V.M., Brian Hallmark, Ph.D., Mike White, Ph.D., Charles Hurst, Ph.D., Bradford Oliver, Dick Albright and Lisa Arreola. They struggled to pare the winners down to the 13 students allowed to compete at the county level.

Going forward will be: 4th grade, Austin Flores; 5th grade, Rachel Hallmark, Kelly Stegeman, Michael Stegeman, Charles Robertson; 6th grade, Brianna Edwards, Fletcher Matthews (Pine Mtn. Learning Center), Joe Bizzini and Brent Edwards; 7th grade, Lily Hallmark, Styles Ephrom; 8th grade, Jamie Bizzini; Josh Arreola and Forrest Csulak of Frazier Mountain High School will also compete at the county level.

This is part of the February 11, 2011 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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