To allow middle school students to develop a better understanding of Shanghai Adolescents Science and Technology Innovation Contest (SHASTIC), during lunchtime on May 17th-18th, 7-9th graders who just participated the 36th SHASTIC came to the New Art Building classrooms to share their experience with 6-7th graders. It was one of the 2021 Middle School Science Week activities.

The 7-9th graders shared their experience from SHASTIC through presentations. First, they introduced the research projects they completed in the fields of biology, social science, and technology. These research projects varied in content, such as the protection of wetlands, the design of real-life CS devices, the influence of COVID on college applications, and the connection between regeneration and autophagy. From this, G6-7 students were able to understand different possibilities of research projects in different fields.

Afterward, the presenters introduced their process of creating a complete research project and the logic behind that, through which students further understood how research is discovered and synthesized. Furthermore, students were able to realize how such research projects can directly solve real-life problems. In their presentations, the presenters showed their experimental results and explained the meaning of these conclusions. Students were very interested in this and came up with many creative ideas.

At last, the presenters spoke about their life in the lab, including how they must maintain exceptional organization skills to complete experiments and how they resolved various hardships they encountered. From this, students were able to have more understanding of scientific research. During the Q&A session, students asked many relevant questions and received thorough explanations.

From this activity, 6-7th graders were able to have a greater understanding of this science competition and gained interest and confidence to one day participate in this event.

(Written by 9(9) Amy Supervised by Michael Martin Pictures by Ginger Edited by Huang Shiyuan, Mikah Jimenez)