The Annual Let's Talk Science Challenge at the University of Guelph

Friday, April 25, 2014 was the fourth annual 

Let's Talk Science Challenge at the University of Guelph

The Let’s Talk Science Challenge is a free science enrichment event for Grades 6-8 students across Canada. This event includes an exciting question and answer competition followed by a hands‑on design challenge that inspires students to acquire science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) knowledge beyond their curriculum. To prepare for the question and answer competition, teams of two to four students study from the 2014 Let’s Talk Science Challenge Handbook, which was released in January, and covers a breadth and depth of science material that goes far beyond the school curriculum. At the end of the day, the winners are celebrated, presented with medals, and crowned the 2014 Let’s Talk Science Challenge Champions.

The University of Guelph’s Let’s Talk Science Challenge brought 30 teams of 2-4 students plus parent volunteers and teachers to campus for the day. We also had seventeen Let’s Talk Science volunteers and three coordinators helping with everything from judging and score keeping to taking photographs and distributing awards. Teams were encouraged to dress in costumes or wear matching team-ware as a we'd award a SPIRIT Award at the end of the day along with prizes for the top 3 teams.

Special Guest Speaker Dr. Cecelia Paine, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, welcomed the students to the University of Guelph campus during the Opening Ceremonies and offered up a bit of history of her career from small farm to academia. She also acted as our ceremonial Quiz Master, asking the first five questions of the Let's Talk Science Challenge Quiz session. Many thanks to Cecelia for making their welcome so special!

During the lunch break, participants were offered tours of the engineering building roof & wind turbine as well as a preview of the WindENG program. 

Thanks to the School of Engineering for making this possible!

While final scores were tallied, Jamie Doran, Entrepreneur, Big Thinker, Musician, Geek & COO of Innovation Guelph, regaled the audience with some bits of wisdom learned on his varied career adventure. Thanks Jamie!

Thanks to 3M for donating all the Let's Talk Science Design Challenge supplies to the National Office, and to the University of Guelph Bookstore for donating 16 reusable grocery bags for the winners' prize packs.

Check out some of our photos of the Challenge Day below! 

Photos complements of our 3 volunteer photographers: 

Alex Swirski, Jessica Nelson and Keith Poore.

The Quiz Challenge!

The Design Challenge!

The Victors!

Spirit Award Kortright Team 1 from Kortright Hills Public School, Guelph	3rd Place Wildcats from Willow Road Public School, Guelph
2nd Place The Return of the Protons from Waverley Drive PS, Guelph	2014 Let's Talk Science Challenge Champions! Not So Average Joes Team 1 from Laurel Wood PS, Waterloo

The team of volunteers that helped us pull it all off!

(and yes, almost everyone is looking at the other camera! LOL)

Mid-year Outreach Update!

We're at the half-way point of our reporting year, and it's been a whirlwind!

We're running nearly 40% more outreach this year than during the same period last year!

As always, we couldn't do it without the help of our amazing volunteers.

A Local Grade 3 Class Learns About Plants & Pollinators

A recent Let's Talk Science activity in a local grade 3 class had the students practically 'buzzing' with excitement about the importance of pollinators to the plant life cycle! ;)
We all put on our Biologists caps, and after examining various seeds, we discussed how seeds spread and the importance of plants to all aspects of human life. Students acted out the life cycle of a plant, responding to extra rain and sun as they grew.

They then had a chance to see the world like a BEE sees it by examining flowers under a black light to help them 'see' the UV active nectar guides that help direct bees to pollen.

As our final activity, the students made their own flowers with crazy cool UV active nectar guides!

It was a fantastic, fun-filled morning for all involved! Thanks everyone!

Volunteer Appreciation Night @ the Grad Lounge

Hi all our wonderful LTS volunteers!

You are cordially invited to join Nancy & I plus some of your fellow volunteers 

at the Grad Lounge 

at 6pm 

on Thursday, November 28th.

We've reserved the big table at the back and will be providing some appetizers as well as raffling off a few prizes before the Grad Lounge Trivia fun begins at 7 pm.

Friends of LTS are absolutely welcome too! But we can't promise you a prize ;-)

Post Party Updates -- 
Out LTS trivia team made an excellent showing AGAIN this semester, placing 3rd and 2nd in the two trivia rounds.
Kate B & Keith P were our top two volunteers this semester! They each received a $10 gift card.

Thanks everyone!
We'll definitely do it again next semester!

What we've been up to this month

LTS at the University of Guelph has already run 28 activities since the start of the semester! Here are just a couple highlights of what our wonderful volunteers have been up to so far.

Monday, September 30th
Liz took 4 brand new volunteers to an after-school group in Guelph to show them the ropes and wow the kids with some Chemistry Magic Show fun!

Thursday, October 17th
4 fabulous volunteers visited a tiny rural school in Dublin, Ontario to run events in all 5 of the school's classrooms. Our volunteers took two special guests along with them for the day to help teach the kids about habitats, animal life cycles and animal adaptations.

Meet our visiting axolotls, Fred and George!

Our Site's Highlights

Our Fantastic Volunteers!

We've totaled the numbers and tallied the points, and concluded it was yet another fantastic year here at Let's Talk Science at the University of Guelph.

From July 1, 2012 - June 30, 2013, our volunteers conducted over 130 activities and reached over 4100 youth. This amounts to over 1300 hours of volunteer time from our 96 active volunteers!

We'd like to tip our hats to all of our active volunteers, especially our top five volunteers, who volunteered the most number of hours to help reach out to youth in our communities.

1. Linda Jewell - 46 hours

2. Roman Kondra - 39.5 hours including 4 rural activities

3. Marshall Lindner - 36.5 hours including an amazing 8 rural activities!

4. Nick Jeffery - 35 hours

5. Larry Chen - 34.5 hours including 2 rural activities (and Larry only started volunteering in Jan!)

Thanks so much for everyone's help! There is absolutely no way we could make such a difference without y'all!

Cheers to a fantastic year!
And cheers to an even better one coming up!

A Record Outreach Semester!

A huge thank you to the 62 volunteers, who spent 425 hours helping us offer over 50 activities last semester. Because of you, Let's Talk Science @ Guelph reached over 1147 youth between September 1st and December 31st, 2012. We've certainly come a long way from the 430 youth visited in the Fall of 2010, and we even beat our previous record of 1000 youth visited in Fall 2011! So this has been our best fall semester ever!

Way to go!!!

But of course, we want this semester to be even BETTER! So I'm challenging all of our 130 volunteers to get involved in at least one activity this semester!! I double-dog-dare you!

Click on the tab at the top for the list of "Upcoming Volunteer Activities" to see how you can help. And remember, if you're in a partnership with an educator, you're expected to visit their class at least twice a year (ideally once each semester), so if you haven't already, shoot them an email soon to start planning your next visit.

Cheers!

Ann
________________________________________

Guelph Coordinator Announcement!

Hi Let's Talk Science volunteers,

Happy New Year! I hope that you had time to relax with friends and family during the break!

I am very sad to say that my (Linda's) time as coordinator has come to an end. I will still be around as a volunteer, but I will no longer be a coordinator. I would like to take a moment to say a huge THANK YOU to all of you! I am really going to miss working with all of you, but I'm looking forward to having the time to volunteer alongside you more often!

Please continue reading below for an introduction from Ann and Nancy (the new coordinators who will be joining Amanda!), announcements about the winter semester training dates (in case you have friends or labmates who would like to volunteer!), and some upcoming activities in the weeks to come.

Best wishes,
Linda

Thank you volunteers!!

As the fall semester wraps up, we've been taking some time to look back on the amazing things that have been accomplished by our volunteers! The fall semester always rushes by; we spend the first month and a half recruiting and training volunteers, and the first in-class visits usually only begin around the middle of October. By the time we get to December, many of the volunteers understandably need to take a step back to prepare for their own exams (and to deal with a heavy load of TA-ship duties)! Despite these challenges, the fall 2011 semester has been a tremendous success by any metric!

• The "partnership-style" of pairing volunteers with teachers directly has allowed volunteers more freedom and flexibility in arranging times that work well in their own schedules! As a result, more activities are happening more frequently at more convenient times!
• Our first rural trips of the year to Arthur, Orangeville, and (not quite rural, but a hike for us!) Durham went smashingly well!
• Amanda's DNA Barcoding activities with high school students across Ontario have been a huge success, and she and her students have made some interesting discoveries (more on this in a later post!)
• So far this year, according to the activities logged on the portal, we have reached an absolutely unbelievable 1,000 youth in Guelph and the surrounding area!!! Considering that last year was a record-breaking year.. and that at this time last year, we had reached 433 youth... I think it's fair to say that Let's Talk Science volunteers at the U of G are on track for another year of big achievements!!
• Probably our most important measure of success is knowing that the volunteers have made a difference. I can't think of a better way to show how much the volunteers' hard work is appreciated than this beautiful card that volunteers Xin and Ramya received from Ms. Kurtz-Favero's grade 1's!

Have a fun, relaxing, safe, friend-and-family-filled winter break everyone!!

What have we been up to?

The fall semester is in full swing, and Let's Talk Science volunteers have already been out and about performing activities with youth in Guelph and beyond! Here are some of the highlights of just some of the activities that we've been up to!

• Linda, Amanda, and Amy showed kids at the Arthur Fall Fair that science doesn't have to take place only in the classroom! Kids at the fair had a chance to test their lung capacity, make slime, and take home some delicious candy DNA!
• Witek, Naheda, and Midori traveled with volunteers from other Let's Talk Science sites in southern Ontario to Alliston, ON to help out at Honda Canada's Take your Kids to Work Day activities! They helped grade 9 students build Rube Goldberg machines! After the activities at the car plant, Witek and Naheda kept the fun rolling by teaching kids about their 5 senses at the New Tecusmeth Library! Check out the full story on the main Let's Talk Science website!
• Jason and Derek have already visited the Guelph Homeschool Science Co-op several times to lead hands-on demonstrations!
• Colette, Midori, and Erica grossed out students at Holy Rosary Catholic Elementary here in Guelph with activities about the human body!

As you can see, we are already off to a busy year! This year, for the first time at the U of G, most volunteers have been placed in year-long partnerships with an educator partner to establish lasting relationships with the youth they visit! Several teams of volunteers have made plans to visit their classes within the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned for more updates about our amazing volunteers!!