Fair showcases student knowledge

Delap Elementary School fifth graders, from left, Pearlina Jack, Christy Anien, Mina Brian and Joselyn Lautrok during the Education Week science fair at the International Conference Center. Photo: Hilary Hosia
Delap Elementary School fifth graders, from left, Pearlina Jack, Christy Anien, Mina Brian and Joselyn Lautrok during the Education Week science fair at the International Conference Center. Photo: Hilary Hosia

HILARY HOSIA

Student improvement was made crystal clear by Delap Elementary School fifth graders Pearlina Jack, Christy Anien, Mina Brian and Joselyn Lautrok during the Education Week science fair at the International Conference Center Wednesday.

The girls presented their experiment eloquently — both in English and Marshallese — and all four took turns explaining in detail their project and all four answered questions with enthusiasm.

Their presentation on how to make a working Lava Lamp may be simple to most, but this is a huge leap compared to three years ago, when students from the same school and the same class couldn’t explain their project, which looked like it was prepared by teachers.

Presentations like these show why DES is WASC accredited and the students’ teacher Almen Kahn was praised for his performance by DES Principal Loretta Case.

A few feet away from the Lava Lamp girls were Majuro Cooperative School fifth graders Ronald Graham and Izerman Ketton explaining the consequences that debris such as plastic has on turtles. They used a life-size inflatable turtle that was choking on a plastic strip with a pile of trash on top of its shell.

“Turtles eat jellyfish,” the duo said. “Sometimes turtles mistake plastic for jellyfish. So, we need to keep our ocean clean and ban plastic everywhere.”

Read more about this in the February 16, 2018 edition of the Marshall Islands Journal.