SciGirls Seven tip: “Girls are motivated by projects they find personally relevant and meaningful.”

  • Everyone likes this!
  • Having a context for what they’re doing is so important. Give students a reason, it makes a huge difference in engagement:
    • If they’re working on a made-up case study, find a way to connect it to everyday life.
    • If they’re working on an actual problem, encase it in its real world context.
  • Demonstrate your own enthusiasm for projects, it’s infectious!
  • For each project create a KWL chart: A table to fill in that asks what you know, what you want to know, what you have learned, and how you can learn more for each project. Have students do the same.
    • Using this material, have students (individually or in groups) reflect on their prior knowledge and reflect on the learning process.
  • Use follow-up prompts to explore students embedded assumptions and encourage them to explore and express things they’re not sure of, like:
    • Then what?
    • Tell me more?
    • Could you give me an example?
  • All SciGirls Seven tips are "Girl Focused & Boy Friendly!"