During the week of February 8th through 11th, all four third grade classes visited the science lab every day to take part in a comprehensive science investigation just like real scientists! The week long investigation required students to make observations, plan and carry our their own unique experiments, collect and graph results, as well as write and present their conclusions. At the end of the experiments, all groups created a poster presentation to share their findings with the class, just as in the real scientific community.

Students began with a class experiment that asked the question, "What variables affect the direction a mealworm travels?" Students created two separate environments for mealworms to travel to inside of special pill boxes with holes drilled between the compartments, and then counted the number of mealworms in each environment after 5 minutes. The students concluded from the experiment that mealworms traveled more often to dry environments than to wet environments. After the initial experiment, each team of 4 students were then able to design their own unique experiment about mealworms, which could include environment variables such as food type, bedding type, and other conditions. The weeklong investigation was adapted from UCSB's SciTrek program and was a great addition to our third grade science program. 

Check out the cafeteria hallway beginning Wednesday February 24th to check out their posters!