FIRST ANNUAL SCIENCE FAIR AT RED HOOK'S MILL ROAD ELEMENTARY SCHOOL WILL BE ON WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26 Topic of "Exploring Your World" will feature 50 projects by local students
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—"Exploring Your World," the first annual science fair at Red Hook's Mill Road Elementary School, is a joint project between Bard College and the Red Hook Central School District. The fair will be held on Wednesday, February 26, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., in the cafeteria of Mill Road's third- to fifth-grade wing. The program is open to the public and will feature submissions from local students, grades kindergarten through five.
The fair will feature 50 projects covering a wide range of science topics. This project has "allowed students to explore an area of science that interests them, and at the same time, they have been able to learn about the scientific method and the design of experiments," according to Valeri J. Thomson, director of the Immediate Science Research Opportunity Program at Bard College. Thomson and Red Hook community member Joan Avenius are organizers of the science fair.
Bard College faculty and staff members, as well as teachers at Mill Road, have served as mentors for the students. Ric Campbell, associate director of the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard, held an introductory session at Mill Road in November to help answer the students' question of "How do I begin?" In December the mentor session was designed to help students narrow down and fine-tune their ideas for experiments. It featured Bard science faculty members John Ferguson, William Maple, Robert Cutler, Michael Tibbetts, and Sven Anderson, as well as a Bard alumnus, Emmanuel Laumonier '00, local environmental scientist Carolyn Miller, and Red Hook school district science teachers Ray Juliano and Pat Smalley. The January session, led by Thomson and Campbell from Bard, allowed students to practice presenting their ideas clearly.
The science fair is sponsored by the Mill Road Elementary School Parent Teacher Association. For further information, call 845-758-7055 or e-mail [email protected].
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