An important Monarchs in the Classroom goal is to promote research and inquiry-based learning. There many opportunities for you and your students to become involved in monarch reseach projects, and to share your results with the broader Monarchs in the Classroom community. The Monarchs in the Classroom Monarch Fair is based on a Science Fair model, with all projects centered on monarch butterflies. The Monarch Fair encourages students to engage in all steps of the research process, including the important final step of data presentation.
Students working individually, in small groups, or as whole classes can submit projects.
The projects can be experiments in which students manipulate variables, or observational studies. Both kinds of studies are important and interesting. For example, if students wanted to study if monarch larvae grow better on swamp milkweed or common milkweed, they would need to do a controlled experiment in which one group of larvae received swamp milkweed and another received common milkweed. If they wanted to study how much weight larvae gain per day, they could simply weigh larvae every day. If your class is raising monarch larvae, or tagging wild monarchs, there are lots of potential research questions that they could investigate.