“If we recognize athletic achievement, we should also be recognizing academic achievement and science achievement. If we invite the team that wins the Super Bowl to the White House, then we need to invite some Science Fair winners to the White House as well.” — Barack Obama
Despite the many misconceptions about wasting school time and resources, science fairs remain an important educational aspect of academics. In an attempt to promote practical knowledge local and international American schools promote science fairs to enhance learning.
Moreover American schools in Dubai and the UAE have added science fairs to their extracurricular in an attempt to motivate students to learn through research and first-hand experiences. If you're a worried parent who doesn’t think science fairs are essential for learning; you may be WRONG! Here are a few benefits your child may be missing out on!
They learn to question
Either with the help of the teachers, or family and peers, science fair projects allow children to come up with ideas. In science fairs children choose ideas or elements they remain curious about and plan out a whole experiment that will solve the problem for them.
The whole process of investigating and solving problems to obtain answers helps nurture their creativity and imagination. Science fairs tend to awaken the “scientist” in children making them aware of their surroundings.
Science fairs are a practical way of learning. The answers to their queries are not going to be from textbooks. After conducting the experiments, your child will be combining and analyzing the data they collected. Results will be analyzed, and a conclusion will be reached.
Learning outside of textbooks remains an important aspect of the best of the international schools that and it allows children to have fun while learning.
They learn to communicate and speak in public
During science fairs, participants are expected to display their results to the judges, to the teachers and their participating peers. In case of an inter-school competition, fellow participants and competitors also need to be convinced.
Throughout this process, children learn essential skills that will benefit them in the future. The first quality is the ability to communicate. They learn to communicate the right information to the right person in the right and effective manner. Secondly, they learn to speak in public.
Having researched the project themselves, they feel confident in relaying their findings to the public are able to present their project to the public. These two skills are essential skills to have in their future academic and the workplace.
If your child is participating in a science fair, he might be gaining some valuable project management skills too. Your child will be involved in the project from its initiation to planning from execution to control.
Participants not only gain creative skills but they also manage their whole project by implementing time and cost managing any last minute changes, monitoring the whole experiment all within specified deadlines. This is an invaluable skill that children get to learn very early in life by participating in science extracurricular.
Science fairs consist of students of each class participating in relevant experiments, so for your child, science fairs and exhibitions are an ideal way to strengthen their understanding of the subject matters that are being taught in the class. If their projects involve topics that aren't part of their syllabus, the projects help them add to their knowledge.
They understand teamwork
Science fairs allow teams to work together in an attempt to accomplish the tasks at hand. Participating children realize the importance of teamwork when they work as a team in an attempt to bring together a project from start to finish.
The importance of helping each other, substituting for their peers, and working together to achieve a common goal comes to light when children work on common projects in science fairs.
Conclusion
Owing to their ability to help your child learn through practically researched knowledge instead of the conventional textbook curriculum science fairs have become an essential extracurricular activity in most American curriculum schools in Dubai and the UAE.
On a lighter note, there may be another reason science fairs may be so popular among American schools. As Dave Barry said in the Miami Herald (22 Mar 1998):
The science fair has long been a favorite educational tool in the American school system, and for a good reason: Your teachers hate you!
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