Insect Fair
Current Year Fair Info | Past Sample Projects | Past Abstracts List | Past Participating Schools
The Monarchs in the Classroom Insect Fair (formely called the Monarch Fair) is based on a Science Fair model, with many of the projects centered on monarch butterflies.
The Insect Fair encourages students to engage in all steps of the research process, including the important final step of data presentation.
View Past Insect Fair Project Abstracts
Who is Eligible?
Students working individually, in small groups, or as whole classes can submit projects. Home-schooled students or children working with their parents or other adults during the summer can (and are encouraged to!) submit projects.
What Kinds of Projects are Eligible?
Eligible student research includes indoor (classroom or home) and outdoor projects. The projects can be experiments in which students manipulate variables, or observational studies. Both kinds of studies are important and interesting. For example, if students wanted to study if monarch larvae grow better on swamp milkweed or common milkweed, they would need to do a controlled experiment in which one group of larvae received swamp milkweed and another received common milkweed. If they wanted to study how much weight larvae gain per day, they could simply weigh larvae every day. If your class is raising monarch larvae or tagging wild monarchs, there are lots of potential research questions that they could investigate. The students at this fair have worked hard to answer a question of their choosing. In some cases, their results are definitive; in other cases their questions remain unanswered. All of them have learned a lot about how science works. Many projects are the results of collaborations with other students or -- in some cases -- whole classes.
For sample research topics, click here, or check out other projects on the site.
How Do We Do a Project?
This website includes many suggestions for carrying out research projects. For a step-by-step guide to taking Middle School students through the whole research process, from coming up with questions to presenting a research report, see our Research Lesson Plans section. You can also check out actual project reports by Elementary, Middle, and High School Students. Here is a list of past participating Schools.
How Do We Submit a Project?
Your report should include the following parts in this order: title page, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion or conclusion, acknowledgments, and bibliography. For details on writing the report, with examples of each section, see our Directions to Authors section. We now accept Complete projects online. After signing up for the fair, teachers can Login to their accounts to submit student projects.
Special Thanks
Several funding agencies have supported Monarch in the Classroom programs, but the Medtronic STAR Foundation deserves special thanks for its support of this Insect Fair. They provided financial support for a summer workshop, instructional supplies, and the reception that is part of the fair.
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