How are science fairs judged? Knowing how they will be judging a science fair makes a difference!
Knowing how your science fair project is going to be judged can be really helpful as you know the things that they will be looking for as they go around judging a science fair project.
Here is how judging a science fair works in most elementary school science fairs:
A rubric is developed based on the goals and the specific points in the assignment.
Usually this involves five different areas, that cover the whole process, not just the final presentation. So the early steps of making a science fair project get equal credit
Example of what five areas a science project will be judged on:
- Hypothesis– Is it written to reflect a specif goal and one variable?
- The experiment itself– Were the directions followed, were there at least three trials were the steps followed clearly listed.
- Conclusion drawn from data– did the conclusion come directly from the results and not from what you “know” already
- Display board– neatness, readability, organization of display board.
- Oral Presentation or Written Report- did the report follow the format given, the right length, grammar, spelling etc.
Each teacher or school will have specific elements they are looking for for each step, or they might choose five different things to judge their science fair.
Scoring
Each step is worth 5 points- so you get a score of 1-5 on eaach element.
A perfect score would be 25 points.
Sometime different people judge different part. Like one person would judge the displays while the language Arts teacher might grade the report teacher, and a team of judges would divvy up the other three.
Some school use three judges who judge the whole project and the average of the three scores is used. So If one student got 25 points from one, 23 from another and 22 from a third the total would be 70, divide by 3 and you get a 23.33 for your average
Other schools use the same rubric, but it is what the teacher uses to give the project a grade, and there is not real judging or prizes awarded. A good science fair project will have all the elements there and ready to go.
Before worrying about judging a science fair, you need a great project that is kid tested and teacher approved!
We have lots great projects through this link, some can be finished in one day!
https://www.24hourscienceprojects.com/ezGaffurl.php?offer=s7n17y&pid=2&tid=co081611