The Science Fair as a Means for Developing Children’s Graphing Skills in Elementary School Evaggelia Kyriazi and Constantinos P. Constantinou Learning in Science Group, University of Cyprus, P.O. Box 20537, Nicosia 1678, CYPRUS Tel 357-2753758, Fax 357-2753702 Email: kyriazi@cytanet.com.cy, c.p.constantinou@ucy.ac.cy Abstract. This article reports on an ongoing research program aiming at the pedagogical exploitation of the science fair as a mechanism for developing investigative skills in elementary school and promoting student inquiry through a sequence of formal and non-formal activities. Specifically, this paper refers to the development of data graphing skills by children aged 10-12 years old. The students, who participated in the teaching intervention, were engaged in a process of undertaking and reporting on authentic investigations in order to contribute to a school science fair. The curriculum used in the present study, was drawn from the program “The Science Fair as a means of developing investigative skills”. Qualitative and quantitative data were obtained from students' responses to paper and pencil open-ended tests, their notebooks and their posters, which were used as sources of evidence in the present study. Analysis of the results demonstrate children’s ability levels on data graphing, difficulties that hamper students' attempts to develop and interpret graphical representations of data, differences between students' graphing achievements between pre-test, mid-test and post-test, and correlations between constructing graphs and interpreting information from graphical representations. This work clearly demonstrates that the construction of graphs needs to be taught systematically in elementary school in combination with other science investigation skills such as interpreting data. Keywords. data graphing, formal and non- formal activities, investigative skills, interpreting information from graphs, science fair. 1. Introduction The rising interest expressed by researchers in reforming science teaching proposes to the promotion of a fundamental objective: to prepare students to participate in a scientifically literate and technologically dependent society as informed and insightful citizens. Curriculum designed for this purpose must provide special emphasis on the development of scientific thinking skills in the context of learning science [18]. The ability to construct graphs is important to science and it can be considered as oe aspect of an individual’s scientific literacy [27, 31, 24, 1]. When arguing in favour of a specific theory, a scientifically literate person needs to manipulate data and refer to relationships as they emerged from evidence represented on graphs or tables. Graphs can summarize very complex information or relationships very effectively. The extensive use of computers, nowadays, has made easier the use of graphs as a way of representing data [29, 1, 26]. This has led to an increas in the visibility of graphical representations in the popular press and other mass communication media. During the last years, the effective use of graphical representations in mathematics and science education has received special attention [25]. Still, there is considerable evidence to suggest that students perform poorly in tasks related to graphing procedures [24, 1]. We take the perspective that graphing strategies need to be systematically promoted in the context of learning science in elementary school within students´ involvement in broader inquiry - oriented activities that are close to their experiences and interests [10]. Hence, there is a necessity for designing teaching interventions aiming at the development of data graphing skills in elementary school through a combination of different learning styles.