Headin' East for science
Rankin, Arviat and Chester students earn trip to national
Darrell Greer
Northern News Services
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
BAKER LAKE
The annual Kivalliq Regional Science Fair saw a school continue its record-breaking run, and a strong team selected for the national event this past month at Jonah Amitnaaq Secondary School in Baker Lake.
Maani Ulujuk Ilinniarvik's (MUI) Chelsea Sammurtok of Rankin Inlet captured the Jim Kreuger Award of Excellence for having the top project overall with Baby Got... Your Back, while William Campbell of Qitiqliq School in Arviat took second for What's a Drift? Where's a Drift? and Delilah Issaluk of Victor Sammurtok School (VSS) in Chesterfield Inlet finished third with Inuit Shades.
All three will travel to Fredericton, N.B., to compete at the Canada-wide Science Fair from May 11 to 16.
Issaluk's selection saw VSS extend its record of having a student selected for the national fair to an unprecedented 13 years.
MUI science teacher Katharine O'Connell said the quality of projects from each community continue to get better every year.
She said the race for the top three spots at the regional fair was extremely close.
"You walk into the gym and you notice how great the displays look, and the scientific thought behind them is progressing each year," said O'Connell.
"I've seen it come so far during the past eight years, and the past couple of years have been great in terms of overall project quality.
"All three winning projects this year are culturally relevant, which helps each one rank higher on the scoring scale.
"It's getting more difficult to predict a high finisher each year, until every aspect of the project and presentation have been judged."
There were 22 projects entered at this year's fair, with all seven Kivalliq communities represented.
The trio of projects selected for the Canada-wide Science Fair represent a strong combination for the Kivalliq, whose students have won a number of bronze medals, special awards and honourary mentions over the years.
Glen Brocklebank of VSS in Chesterfield Inlet said the KSEC changed the judging criteria a bit this year to put more emphases on the process.
He said new resources were also developed to help level projects and encourage students to identify criteria KSEC wants to see.
"We were successful in trying that this year and, ultimately, it will go back to all the schools and teachers so we can identify more criteria the students can use to get their projects to a higher level," said Brocklebank.
"This past year was the highest number of level three projects we've had.
"This year, about half the projects entered were in the higher levels.
"We've come from where, as an organization, we were bringing lower-level projects to reach the point we're at now, and a good part of that is because we have a lot of teachers who've been around our programs for about five-to-seven-years now."
Brocklebank said that continuity has resulted in students producing higher-level projects at their own schools to earn the right to compete at the regional fair.
He said today's projects feature more tests, detail and analysis than ever before, and by quite a wide margin in most cases.
"We didn't have a single low-level project this year that drew its conclusion from a single experiment done once.
"Our students are now doing multiple tests, taking averages and doing calculations.
"That's really been encouraging to see.
"About 60 per cent of this year's projects tried to identify and control variables, so the data looked at more than one thing, and isolated the factors that can be controlled for the conclusion."
Brocklebank said it was incredible to see VSS's streak reach 13 this year.
He said Chester students put a lot of pressure on themselves to do well at the regional event, and a culture of science fair excellence has been created at the school.
"You're super-excited as a teacher because your students are reaching for such a high level.
"And, because we've been successful in the past, they have an idea of what their project should look like, and what it should be about in order to have a chance to go (to) the Canada-wide Science Fair.
"There's still things we need to work on, like stepping our game up with translations.
"Delilah (Issaluk) made it into third to qualify this year, but the other schools are really challenging now, so there's some areas we have to really make sure we cover if we want to make it 14 straight appearances or more."
