GENEVA —
It’s that time again! The Geneva High School Science Fair is just around the corner and students are working very diligently to finish up the last minute touches to projects. With the expanded focus on the Science Department, teachers have encouraged even more participation and involvement. Science fair adviser Wendy Booth expects between 160 and 200 junior high and high school students to participate. The science fair will take place on Feb. 1 and the make-up day is Feb. 2. The event will be held at GHS and all projects will be set up in Science Department rooms. Participants will prepare for judging at 4 p.m., projects will be open for viewing by the public from 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. and judging will begin at 5:30 p.m.
All participants of the science fair will be following the Ohio Academy of Science standards which will enable high scoring projects to be eligible to qualify for district and state competitions. Scoring is based on the knowledge achieved, the use of the scientific method, presentation and originality. A perfect score is a 40 for individual projects and a 50 for partner projects. If a student scores 36 or higher, he will have the opportunity to present his project on March 31 at Youngstown State University. Geneva High School usually sends between 20 and 40 students each year to this district competition. The final stage of science fair is the state competition, and is reached by only 25 to 50 percent of district qualifying students. The state competition will take place May 5 at The Ohio State University in Columbus. The rewards of excelling to higher levels of science fair include scholarship opportunities, extra credit opportunities and the satisfaction of competing among some of the best science projects in the state.
Student projects range among very different subjects and branches of science. These include projects in the areas of behavioral and social sciences, biochemistry, botany, chemistry, computer science, microbiology, zoology, earth and space science, engineering, environmental, mathematics, medicine and health and physics. Students have already received and completed forms on which they have indicated their topic of study in order to place judges with specific projects. This year the judges will include high school science teachers, community members, representatives from businesses such as Waste Management, and students from advanced placement science classes. Each judge will be paired with a partner to examine several projects all based upon the same topic of study. Judges often learn a great deal themselves from what the students researched and they do not have to be experts in the field to determine the rating of a project.
“Pardon, mon Francaise.” Foreign language students are becoming experts in communicating their enthusiasm for their studies, as GHS French and Spanish clubs are getting together once again to produce videos about their languages to present to the middle school. The Language Department will be working with the audio-visual department and Bob McQuoid to edit and improve the videos this year. These videos will be sent to the Geneva Middle School in early March, to show the up-and-coming freshmen what the two languages are all about so that each student can make an educated decision for scheduling his high school language class.
Spanish Club president, Kayleena Brashear said, “The videos are a fun project which brings Spanish Club members together while encouraging younger students to become involved with the club.”
Members of each club will be writing and performing skits that cover such topics as numbers, days of the week, food, colors and greetings. When asked what they felt to be the most important aspect of making these videos, French Club members said that they want next year’s freshmen to view how interesting the French language really can be.
“My French class does a lot of fun activities like constructing French markets and French Christmas cards,” said Ashleigh Melvin.
Both Spanish club adviser Roberta Cozad and French Club adviser JoAnn O’Connor are very dedicated to teaching students the different languages as gate ways to becoming more cultured. As the middle school students watch the language videos in March, members of both language clubs hope that the younger students will become interested and decide to pursue one of the two classes during their high school career.
Congratulations to senior Kayleena Brashear for coming in third at the district Veterans of Foreign Wars Voice of Democracy Speech Contest. Her speech now advances to the state competition.
School Columnists
Related Photos
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Jordyn Willis and Lindsey Adams
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GENEVA HIGH School French Club members Ashley Freeman, Emma Cigany and Kat Sundquist sport their “Pardon mon Francaise!” shirts as they perform their French Club skit on “greetings” to be shown to the Geneva eighth graders in March. ( Photo by Jordyn Willis)
Discussion
Geneva preparing for annual Science Fair
Students working diligently on wide variety of projects for competition
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