The+Tips

Display Board Tips - People read top to bottom, left to right. Arrange your Headings appropriately! Here's a suggested order you can have them in:

__ Left panel __ Question Background Info Hypothesis Materials Procedure

__ Center Panel __ Title Your name underneath Data/Charts/Graphs some pictures

__ Right Panel __ Data Analysis Conclusions

- Spend a lot of time making it neat and cutting carefully. A sloppy rushed board gives a bad first impression. - The judges will ask you to briefly explain how you did your project and what your results were. Be prepared to summarize your experiment in a minute or less.

Oral Presentation Tips

- The first slide is your title slide (Title of project followed by your name); the last slide is an exit slide ("Thank you for your attention are there any questions?") --- all slides in-between should follow the format above in that order - Keep it simple! No transitions, no text flying in, no animations. No background colors behind your text. Nice large black font on a white background is best. - Talk about your data analysis as you show each graph. Then when you get to the data analysis slide, you can say that this is just a summary of what you had just explained. Give the judges a few moments to read it over on their own. - Hypothesis and Conclusion slides should have 1-line summaries instead of giant paragraphs. The giant paragraphs you wrote will be delivered verbally - When you save it to the Share Drive, put your name as the title of the filename

General Tips for Everyone

- Read the Scientific Method Notes and Supplemental Science Fair Notes for what to have in each section - Proofread! Spellcheck won't catch mistakes that are real words (I'm curtain you know what I mean). Reread what you wrote, and have a parent (or someone smarter) check for errors as well. - Keep your bibliography and any graphs you didn't use in your logbook - Your logbook needs to have all of your raw data handwritten in pencil or pen - Remember to use metric only (no feet, inches, pounds, cups, fahrenheit, etc) throughout - Don't use first or second person anywhere - The judges may ask you to identify your control group, independent variables, and the dependent variable. This information should all be in your Background Info section anyway (along with some scientific principles). - Include pictures of yourself with your face actually doing the experiment.

Here are some tips for your Graphs, Data Analysis, and Conclusions. This is not enough! Go back and reread your Scientific Method Notes and Supplemental Science Fair Notes too - Title should have information on both axes - ex. "Distance Traveled by Rocket over Time - Trial 1" - Axes should be labeled with units in parentheses - ex. "Distance (m)", "Time (sec)"
 * __ Graphs __**

- Keep it factual, no conclusions, no inferences - Give every number from each graph
 * __ Data Analysis __**

- 1st Paragraph - was your hypothesis correct. Show how the data either supports or refutes it - 2nd Paragraph - why did things work out the way they did. Give your scientific research to support your claim - 3rd Paragraph - errors and how you should have fixed them - 4th Paragraph - benefits to society. Who is your project useful to and why? - 5th Paragraph - future research. If you could do a different, brand new experiment based on the results of this one, what would you do? ex. "Based on the fact that metal rockets traveled farther than plastic ones, the researcher would like to test rockets of different types of metals in the future." - The first sentence of each paragraph should have keywords to highlight what's in the paragraph (so your judge can just check off the box that you did it before they read it). ex. "As with any experiment, this experiment had some unavoidable errors."
 * __ Conclusions __**

And here are some Do's and Don'ts written by real 8th graders who went through SF the first time. Note-- these are not written by me! Take them for what they're worth.

=__** Do **__=

=__** Don't **__=