By Moneth G. Deposa
Variety News Staff

OVER 500 students at Dandan Elementary School are competing in this year’s Science Fair which started yesterday.
The school has been holding the event for the past seven years and every year the projects get better, according to DES principal Jonas Barcinas.
Entries are displayed in the classrooms.
On Wednesday, parentswill be able to see the projects before the winners are announced.
“We will select the top three winners in five different categories and ribbons and gifts will be awarded to the deserving students,” Barcinas said, adding that compared to previous events, this year’s science fair has the highest number of participants.
“From kindergarten to sixth grade, all will be competing as judges go around and decide who the winners will be,” Barcinas said. “This is an exciting event for our kids as they will all be challenging each other’s creativity and resourcefulness.”
The projects will be judged on scientific thought, creative ability, understanding, clarity, dramatic value and technical skill.
“We have individual and group entries because we empower our kids to choose what they want to work on,” Barcinas said. “Basically this is a review of what they have learned in their science classes.”
He said the activity aims to strengthen the students’ skill in conducting research.
In the class of fifth grade teacher Bill Harwood, the entries of his 21 students included studies on volcano eruption, the effect of chemical waves, how salt crystals are formed, how to inflate a balloon, dynamic dumplings, and how moon craters are formed.
“We have 10 entries from our 21 students here,” he said. “Their work involves simple experiments which they prepared over about a month — they picked the idea or concept themselves.”
He said his students were able to learn the scientific process by doing experiments, recording the results and sharing their findings with their classmates.
“We have a couple of pretty good entries and we hope they will be recognized and get some awards for they deserve it,” Harwood said.
For fifth graders Yuri Cepeda and Cyndi Benavente, working together brought them “a lot of fun and excitement.”
“We were curious about volcanos and how they erupt,” they said.
DES designated March as Science Awareness Month.