KINGMAN — Many schools in the spring put on a science fair that showcases what students have learned in the class room. Two area middle schools held such events recently, Kingman and Black Mountain. There’s a lot of preparation that goes into a comprehensive presentation so the students experience many skills as KMS science teacher Visha Abraham explains.
“It gives them a chance to research. Study things that they’re curious about. They pick their own topics from a list of about 120 topics. And they’ve worked with their group to decide which one. And so they generally pick things that interest them, and they do a range of things. So they have the boards, they have an essay or a newspaper. They also have to do a podcast, so they have to talk about it for 20 minutes. And so they figure out new ways to use technology, how to use the computers, basic research. They all have their research of 21 paragraphs, so they’ve been researching and studying things from January until spring break in March. Right now they’re putting their boards together and making them look nice.”
Involved preparation was not exclusive to Kingman Middle School. The same went on at Black Mountain School in Golden Valley. The science teacher there is Marai Sharkis. She talks about the reasons for science education and how these presentation skills can better a student’s life without regard to whether they actually enter a scientific field or not.
“I believe that everyone should learn something about science, the basics of it, because this is who we are. We are science organisms. We understand where we’re going. We understand also our abilities and the potential that we have to make a better life for ourselves and the world that we live in. A good presentation tells not just us, but the potential hiring force that we are capable of not doing as what we are supposed to do but to create more plans to make the business better.”
It seems unfair to Mohave County that the Arizona State Science and Engineering Fair is held in March, and that’s probably the reason that so few school have science fairs. All the more reason to heap congratulations on local staffs, teachers Visha Abraham, Jay Tedder, and Joshua Teller at Kingman Middle School, AND, at the smaller Black Mountain Middle School, the class room science teacher Marai Sharkis, and Marcus Moore, a math teacher at the school, who aided with the project.
Kudos also need to go out to the site administrators, Kristina Weaver at Kingman Middle School, and Dan Emborsky, the principal at Black Mountain. And lastly, to the custodial staffs at each school who work so hard on set up, take down, and extra clean up in the gymnasiums where each science fair took place.
