The following article has been excerpted from Encouraging Your Child’s Science Talent. Parents of children with precocious science ability will find the suggestions in Encouraging Your Child’s Science Talent engaging, encouraging, and practical advice.

Independent research projects can play an extremely important role in the scientifically talented student’s development. In addition to developing particular skills, such research projects can allow students to become recognized as experts in a particular subject area. It is also worth mentioning that college admissions officials generally recognize the substantial extracurricular effort that independent research requires, and tend to look favorably on students who have successfully completed science fair projects or other similar competitions. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) recommends that:

Before graduating from high school, students working individually or in teams should design and carry out at least one major investigation. They should frame the question, design the approach, estimate the time and costs involved, calibrate the instruments, conduct trial runs, write a report, and, finally, respond to criticism. (1993, Section B, ¶ 4–5)

These experts suggest that such investigations might take weeks or even months to complete, and may require work both in and out of school. Although the above recommendation is directed primarily at high school students, authorities suggest that independent research projects can be undertaken successfully by academically talented children as young as 9 or 10 years old (Kellett, 2005).

Independent research experience and competitions are valuable pursuits for scientifically advanced children. Being constrained to follow a recognized format, meet a deadline, compare one’s efforts with others, and explain one’s work in public are all important learning experiences that will help any student with later success in his or her life and career.

Your child will find that the approaches and tactics outlined here can be applied to a wide variety of future school projects and even to future careers in many different fields. You may be surprised to hear that writing may actually be the most important skill a child develops by doing such projects. It is the one activity that ties all the others together, and it is the most transferable of the varied skills students practice in the course of completing a project. The particular observational or measurement techniques and even the field of study itself may change as the student grows older and develops new interests, but writing skills will always remain necessary and useful. By writing scientific works, and by reading scientific writing by others, students move toward an internalized understanding of the conventions of scientific study. Through reading and writing over many projects and many years of study, students come to recognize and learn to apply the shared conventions that make scientific communication possible.

Because of the sustained individual effort that projects of this type require, effective guidance is vital if students are to achieve successful outcomes. Where will this come from? You guessed it! Although teachers and other mentors often can provide assistance, even in this best-case scenario your timely assistance and encouragement will undoubtedly be required. With younger students who may not yet have any teachers who specialize in science, your parental guidance will be absolutely necessary if your child is to get the most out of the experience.

In the pages that follow, you’ll be introduced to the general processes and time frame to expect. This chapter focuses on the science fair project because this special type of project is ideal for meeting the learning needs of the scientifically able student. However, these suggestions will also help you help your child be successful with other similar research-based independent learning activities.

A science fair project represents a relatively common, yet specialized genre of independent study. Students in upper elementary grades usually work in teams, while older students more commonly complete individual projects.

Science fairs are competitions typically conducted at different levels, from the local classroom, school, or district level all the way to national and international competitions. Winners of fairs at the lower levels typically are invited to compete at the higher and more competitive levels. If your child’s school does not sponsor a fair and your child is still interested in participating, it is usually possible to enter at the next level of competition. Check with fair officials.

Science fair projects can be distinguished from other types of independent projects by three primary characteristics: (1) the research focus of the projects themselves, which requires that students generate new knowledge related to their topic; (2) the specific format in which this work is presented, which is to say, as an exhibit that includes a display board, laboratory notebook, and formal research report; and (3) the science fair itself, which is a day-long event in which projects conducted by different students are evaluated by panels of judges.

The keys to a successful research project sound deceptively simple: choose a feasible, appropriate, and safe topic; collect data in a scientifically defensible manner; document the project effectively; and be able to explain the project to interested people. However, if you and your child have never been involved in undertaking such a project, it can seem quite daunting. Here are some tips to make it all easier.

The first, and perhaps most important, key to any successful project is to allow sufficient time to complete it. Two to three months is a realistic time frame for conducting a science fair project. At the more competitive state and national levels, most students will have developed their work over the course of an entire year.

Experienced teachers recognize that an extended time frame produces better results and is less stressful for students. These teachers generally will offer grades or other feedback on an ongoing basis, and will break down the process into a series of manageable steps for their students.

If you are reading this advice too late to apply it, go ahead and provide the emotional encouragement and practical support your child needs to make a run for the finish line anyway, rather than giving up. Teaching your child that he can still come through in a pinch also is a valuable life lesson. (Above all, though, don’t be tempted to do the project for your child. That’s a horrible lesson and precedent.)

It is actually possible to develop and carry out an adequate project over as little as one extended weekend. I can almost guarantee you, however, that doing so will burn out you and your child to the degree that you both vow never to do a project that way again.

What will your child work with? For most children, this is the first decision, and for many, an enthusiastic and passionate one: “I want to study my goldfish! I want to build a bridge! I want to make dynamite!”

The best science fair projects generally are those done by students who have a strong and genuine interest in the topic they are investigating. But, beyond interest, the topic also must be feasible. No matter how interested your child may be in the geology of Mars, you probably won’t be able to help him or her go there to conduct an experiment. Rather than just adopting your child’s first idea, spend some time talking about issues of safety, suitability, and the hassle factor. Some entities are definitely easier to work with than others.

Project ideas that involve areas such as chemistry, electricity, radiation, or molds and microorganisms require special efforts because of safety concerns. Many chemicals, devices such as lasers, and other potentially dangerous materials will also require special approval before the project can be started. Information about and the necessary forms to gain approval are available online in many states. Many local fairs will adhere to the ISEF rules, which can be downloaded from http://www.sciserv.org/isef/document.

You may want to consider sidestepping the potential problems involved by encouraging your child to consider changing the nature of the project at the outset. However, if you do get the OK for a project in one of these areas of safety concern, realize that before your child begins an experiment, you will need to review her procedures carefully. Have the teacher review them, as well. The safety concerns presented in Table 15 are only a sample. Be sure your child understands and follows all the safety procedures needed for his or her own project.

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Many students want to use household pets or other people in their project. However, this can be a hassle. Special rules must be followed in experiments using humans. Nothing may be done that is likely to cause them harm. Participation should be voluntary. Special signed forms, approvals, and procedures are involved; again, they usually must be submitted before the work starts. (Some experiments, like those that just involve observing people, may be exempt, but may need to be submitted for approval anyway to make this determination.)

Experiments with fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals (i.e., any vertebrate animal) also follow special rules. Generally, a qualified adult trained in animal care must agree to oversee the project even before the first organism is obtained. Increasingly, a veterinarian’s supervision is required.

Get a copy of the rules; read them before you even begin, and decide whether it is worth the potential aggravation. Studies involving humans or other vertebrate animals will require extra layers of approval before you can begin your project; if these approvals are not obtained ahead of time, the project will be disqualified from competing in most science fairs. Your child’s science teacher or the school’s science fair organizer will have the paperwork you need to fill out to get these approvals started, but be sure to allow extra time for the process.

Also consider what you will do with the experimental entities after the project is over. Robots could sit on a shelf in the garage forever, but are you prepared to clean gerbil cages for the rest of their natural life? Plants are great; no one will object if your child’s bean plants are fed to a rabbit after testing how well different types of organic compost make them grow. Native invertebrates, from crickets and worms, to the little parasitoid wasps called WOWBugs (Matthews, Koballa, Flage, & Pyle, 1996), can safely be let go into your back yard after studying their behavior. Native plants, insects, and other arthropods are relatively easy to find, and can be used in any number of innovative science projects. Crickets and worms can be purchased in bulk at bait shops. Even cockroaches have been used successfully as research subjects in award-winning projects. Table 16 shows some of the advantages of using hassle-fee experimental subjects in your child’s project. In most cases, a bit of creative thought about alternatives can make your experiments safer and simpler, and reduce the amount of paperwork you and your child will have to fill out to do them.

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Once your child has identified an interesting invertebrate, plant, object, or other subject to experiment with, he has to figure out what to do with it. If your child has never done an independent research project, he may have trouble going beyond this point to pinpoint a specific research problem. If so, skip ahead to the Four Question Strategy in the section, “What to Do When You Have No Idea What to Do.” However, if your child already has identified a general research idea, picking a title can be a great way to start defining the project more fully.

Word the proposal as a question, using the form “What is/are the effect(s) of ______ on ______?” Be as specific as possible. Include the things you will measure (see below). For example, rather than just “What are the effects of fertilizer on plants?” ask “What is the effect of fertilizer dosage on soybean plant root growth?” Now it’s clear that you’ll be measuring dosages and root growth.

Titles sometimes also benefit from adding another short statement at the end of the main question, to clarify the purpose or conditions of the experiment. For example, the above message might be clarified by adding “during different growing seasons.”

Coming up with the title at the beginning of the project accomplishes two things at once. It defines the project, and it also gives a title under which to present the results.

This title-first approach also helps determine the steps that must come next; based on the sample title in the previous paragraph, it should be clear that this project will require fertilizer, soybean plants, and the time to conduct the tests during different growing seasons.

A whole host of errors can creep in if measurements are taken only once—experimenter blunders such as writing down the wrong number, systematic slip-ups such as failing to consider that plants may have different growth rates even under the same environmental conditions, or a variety of other types of errors (see Allchin, 2001). Repeating measurements may be the single most effective way to reduce the influence of many of these sources of potential error.

With some types of projects, measurements can be repeated using the same experimental entity. For example, the robot can be run up the same slope a dozen times. In other cases, the entities themselves must be repeated. To determine bean plant growth 3 days after fertilization, one needs to obtain the average value for a dozen bean plants; it’s not enough to just measure a single plant over and over a dozen times on day three.

The “dozen” number was pulled out of a hat. Unfortunately, there is no single magic number of times to repeat an experiment or measurement to ensure sufficient results. It will depend on the type of experiment, the nature of the data, and the field of study. In chemistry laboratory practice, for example, three repetitions would be considered a good minimum number for a relatively simple but labor-intensive procedure, such as an acid-base titration. However, if the first three measurements did not agree with one another sufficiently well, a fourth measurement would be appropriate. Because the main source of differences in the values would probably be human error in conducting the procedure, a chemist might assume that if three of these four measures were in close agreement but the fourth was quite different, the three that were similar were better approximations of the quantity that is being measured.

In contrast, a project measuring plant growth might need 10 or more plants in each experimental condition. More than the measurement process is involved in the differences observed in their varying growth rates. Rarely would the biological researcher discard any measurement. However, if it seemed justified for reasons that had little to do with the research (e.g., one plant got knocked over and never quite recovered), the omission in the data would be clarified with a footnote.

In general, more is better. (In research with human health, scientists often have thousands of repetitions!) Regardless of the experiment, fewer than three repetitions will not be considered adequate by many science fair judges.

Judges often will question students about potential sources of error in project results, and the student who can demonstrate an understanding of the need for multiple trials will probably receive higher marks. In some fairs, the use of repetitions is also formalized on the grading scale that the judges use. Your child can ask her science teacher or mentor to help her figure out how many repetitions might be appropriate for her particular project, but if their advice seems off the mark, be prepared to offer your own input, as well.

Good study designs should eliminate or minimize the possible effects of variables other than those the child intends to investigate. Below are a few of the most common ways scientists control their experimental conditions.

As mentioned above, simply using many entities in each treatment group will help cancel out random variation, such as different rates of growth from one plant to the next.

Including parallel entities that don’t receive any treatment at all (controls) will show what would happen normally in the absence of the treatment. For example, plants may grow in average soil or even in water alone, so it should be obvious that not all of the growth of the group that was fertilized was due to the fertilizer treatment alone. By setting up the experiment to include one group of plants that are fertilized and one group that are not, one can better tell how much of the growth is normal versus how much may be explained by the experimental treatment.

Providing standardized conditions can be a particular challenge when working with humans or with intelligent animals. Scientists the world over know the cautionary tale of Clever Hans, a horse that seemed to be able to do arithmetic (see the sidebar for the story of Clever Hans).

The Tale of Clever Hans

In the 1890s in Germany, a horse called Clever Hans baffled scientists and public audiences with his intellectual abilities, which included mathematics, an aptitude for identifying musical intervals, and a working knowledge of the German language. If someone were to ask him the square root of 16, Hans would dutifully reply with four taps of his hoof.

An investigating panel of two zoologists, a psychologist, a horse trainer, and a circus manager could find no flaw in the horse’s talents. Indeed, Clever Hans seemed to be on the verge of embarrassing the entire scientific community until one young psychologist asked how Hans would perform if asked questions by someone who didn’t know the correct answers. It was then that the horse’s score plummeted to almost zero.

Clever Hans had not mastered mathematics, music, or German after all, but had in effect learned to read peoples’ minds by observing subtle changes in their posture, breathing and facial expressions (Adapted from Carroll, 2005).

Making everything else the same is the only way to have any idea whether observed results are the consequence of the things that were changed on purpose. Experiments with living things, in particular, must be set up to minimize the effects (if any) of environmental differences. In our experiments involving plant growth and fertilizer, for example, every group would have to be kept under identical lighting, temperature, and rainfall.

Controlling for other variables can occasionally require substantial effort, as illustrated in the following example from Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman’s well-known essay, “Cargo Cult Science”:

For example, there have been many experiments running rats through all kinds of mazes, and so on—with little clear result. But in 1937 a man named Young did a very interesting one. He had a long corridor with doors all along one side where the rats came in, and doors along the other side where the food was. He wanted to see if he could train the rats to go in at the third door down from wherever he started them off. No. The rats went immediately to the door where the food had been the time before.

The question was, how did the rats know, because the corridor was so beautifully built and so uniform, that this was the same door as before? Obviously there was something about the door that was different from the other doors. So he painted the doors very carefully, arranging the textures on the faces of the doors exactly the same. Still the rats could tell. Then he thought maybe the rats were smelling the food, so he used chemicals to change the smell after each run. Still the rats could tell. Then he realized the rats might be able to tell by seeing the lights and the arrangement in the laboratory like any commonsense person. So he covered the corridor, and still the rats could tell.

He finally found that they could tell by the way the floor sounded when they ran over it. And he could only fix that by putting his corridor in sand. So he covered one after another of all possible clues and finally was able to fool the rats so that they had to learn to go in the third door. If he relaxed any of his conditions, the rats could tell.

Now, from a scientific standpoint, that is an A-number-one experiment. That is the experiment that makes rat-running experiments sensible, because it uncovers the clues that the rat is really using—not what you think it’s using. And that is the experiment that tells exactly what conditions you have to use in order to be careful and control everything in an experiment with rat-running. (Feynman, 1974, ¶ 31–33).

By starting with a potential project title and the work it implies, you and your child should easily be able to run a reality check on the proposed project right at the start. Don’t skip this step—it’s important.

At this point it should become apparent that some titles are just too limited or too ambitious, in which case it should still be relatively easy to modify them. Your title question “What is the effect of fertilizer dosage on soybean plant root growth?” might be amended to say “What is the effect of fertilizer dosage on soybean plant growth during the fall outdoor growing season in Zone 7?” This modified title conveys more precisely the actual intent of the project, and, as an added bonus, the title no longer implies a project that includes measuring growth rates during other times of year or in other climate zones.

Unusual tools may be needed for some projects. Consider this issue now. Often mentors, parents, or teachers may be able to arrange for students to borrow specialized equipment. Other times, creativity becomes an important skill as students work to construct their own apparatus to fulfill the same purpose as expensive commercial equipment.

Many of the ideas that are recycled each and every year at school science fairs across the country—picture the classic model of a volcano—are really nothing more than demonstrations. A demonstration conveys clearly how something works, but does nothing else. For some types of competitions, a demonstration is the right approach, but for a science fair it is not appropriate. Science projects must include research.

At a minimum, for a project to be considered research, it must involve measuring how changing one thing affects the measured value of something else. To make the poor overused volcano a research project, one might investigate how changing the diameter of the central tube of the volcano affects the height of the eruption, keeping the amount of eruption-producing chemicals the same. One might also study how different dilutions of the chemicals cause the eruption to change in height, or in volume of bubbles that erupt. Incorporating any of these uses of measurement, studied across controlled changes of a single variable using repeated measurements, would make the project a very nice piece of research rather than simply a demonstration.

One of the best ways to tell if a project is research is to consider whether or not it results in new knowledge. Projects that have produced new information are quite likely to be research, while projects that have not are probably demonstrations.

An award-winning research project nearly always incorporates some sort of twist, that is, something that makes your project unique or different from the projects other students might develop if they started with the same materials. Although extensive lists of projects are available in books and online, I have avoided including any of these sources here because they share a common shortcoming—most of the projects they list are not research and/or are not unique. Few things are less exciting to a science fair judge than encountering a whole row of nearly identical projects. What’s more is that having a wide variety of projects gives all students a greater opportunity to learn from each other’s work.

When assigned the task of identifying a specific research problem, some students are gripped by panic. Others propose broad topics such as plants, insects, or chemistry. What does the term specific research problem mean to a scientist? How can you help your son or daughter change a general topic (or the total lack of a topic at all) into a quality original research problem?

Sometimes, students are given a book of science fair ideas as a supposed way out of this problem. They follow the project directions like a recipe. When the judge asks why a particular method was used, they can only answer, “That’s what the book said to do.”

This is not what your student needs. Instead, he needs a strategy to help develop an interesting topic into a well-designed experiment.

The strength of the Four Question Strategy approach (Cothron, Giese, & Rezba, 2000) is that it automatically results in a whole host of feasible project ideas on almost any given topic your child can come up with.

The easiest way to understand this strategy is to model it. Suppose your child has come up with the general topic of crickets. Begin by reading the following four questions and sample answers. Encourage rapid brainstorming but don’t judge the quality of the ideas just yet. The more responses your child can list, the better experiment he or she will be able to design at the end.

Question 1: What materials are readily available for conducting experiments on crickets?
Crickets from the bait shop, clear shoeboxes for cages, dog food for them to eat, a clock, a ruler . . .

Question 2: What do crickets do?
They hop, they crawl, they fight, they sing, they sleep, they eat . . .

Question 3: How can I change the materials in Question 1 to affect the actions listed in Question 2?
Change the number of crickets in a cage, change the size of the cages, feed them different kinds of food . . .

Question 4: Based on what crickets do, how can I measure or describe the response of crickets to the change?
Count how many times they chirp in a certain length of time, measure them and see how fast they grow, weigh them, measure how fast they move or how many times they jump . . .

To design an experiment for a science project, your child only has to select one choice, such as “change the number of crickets” from the responses to Question 3. This will be the independent variable. Then select a dependent variable from Question 4, such as “count how many times they chirp.” To make the experiment fair, all other responses to Question 3 must be kept the same. They become constants in the experiment.

The most effective experiments use only one independent variable and one dependent variable. Although it is possible to design more complex experiments with multiple independent and dependent variables, interpreting the outcome(s) becomes trickier.

Note that if you decide to use the Four Question Strategy, here’s where the books of science fair project ideas can actually be of use. Because they provide a list of necessary materials and a description of the action that will occur, the books already answer Questions 1 and 2. Using something from these books, answer Questions 3 and 4 to generate an original experiment.

To write the hypothesis for an experiment, use this format:

If independent variable chosen from Question 3 increases/decreases, then dependent variable selection from Question 4 will increase/decrease/remain the same.

In the case of our crickets experiment, one wording could be “If the number of crickets in a cage increases, then the number of times they chirp per minute will increase.” Alternatively, “If the number of crickets in a cage increases, then the number of times they chirp per minute will decrease.”

A second set of crickets, kept in a cage where everything is the same except that the numbers of crickets don’t vary, serves as a control group. The actions of these crickets must be observed, too. Comparing the actions of the control group and the experimental group will help your child understand and explain the changes observed. For example, perhaps both sets of crickets suddenly quieted down in response to changes in lighting; without the control group, your child would have no way to know the quietness was not due to the change in number that he or she made.

The questions that drive scientific inquiry are based on observations. In science, observation is the use of the senses—such as vision or hearing—to gather and record information about structures or processes.

Recorded observations are called data. (It’s a plural word; the singular is datum.) Put another way, data are items of information. Observations are often recorded as measurements, also called quantitative data. Scientists worldwide use an international system of measurements based on the metric system. If your student’s project is quantitative, it too will need to use measurements from this system rather than the more familiar inches, pounds, or gallons.

Data also may be qualitative—that is, in the form of descriptions instead of measurements. These data are usually documented with careful notes, often accompanied by photographs or video footage. Qualitative data must be very clearly organized, consistently recorded, and reliable if they are to be of use.

Data collection methods will vary widely depending on the project in question. Data might include anything from photos or transcriptions of video footage to graphic output from analytical instruments. Students will want to work with their teacher or mentor to decide what information they will need to collect to answer their title question, and to determine what equipment they will need to access to make their measurements.

Science fairs require students to follow a formalized and quite specific set of conventions for presenting their work. These conventions are based on how researchers in corporate and academic research settings convey their findings to one another and to the world at large. The three major components of this effort are the laboratory notebook, the formal report, and the poster presentation or “big board.” Each of these components of the exhibit highlights a particular facet of the overall presentation.

The lab notebook needs to be started on the first day of the project. Lab notebooks are characterized by a permanent (sewn) binding, and by pages that are numbered consecutively from the first to the last page in the book. Lab notebooks may be purchased with preprinted page numbers, or students can number the pages themselves when they begin using the book.

Lab notebooks provide the raw record of what students actually have done. They should be completed only in ink, handwritten. Each entry should be dated, and mistakes should be crossed through with a single line, but never scratched out or erased. No pages should ever be removed from a lab notebook.

In real research settings, lab books are important enough that they may be notarized at the end of each day’s work. The lab notebook provides formal evidence of when and by whom a new idea or process was developed. In professional research settings, the contents of the lab notebook can determine who receives patent rights, and potentially the millions of dollars in royalties that may accompany them.

The research report is a typed document that presents an overview of the project and the results that were obtained. It is the most formal part of the project exhibit, and this formality can present a source of difficulty for students who are unfamiliar with academic writing conventions.

Science fair entry materials usually offer general guidance on format and may even specify such matters as the way to enter references, whether footnotes are permitted, and the proper ways to present figures and tables. Projects in the social sciences usually follow American Psychological Association style (APA; 2001). Physical and biological science projects often follow conventions outlined in a document called Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, which can be accessed at http://www.icmje.org.

Look through the written materials about the science fair early and often during the course of the project. If they provide little or no guidance on research report format, encourage your child to check with science fair organizers or with his teacher to learn which style is most appropriate for his project.

Commonly, the report will have six sections: an introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusions, and list of references. Sometimes the results, discussion, and conclusions will be combined into a single section. Table 17 explains what each section of the research report should contain.

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Learning to write to a particular format and follow a particular style provides great practice for a career in the sciences, particularly for those entering fields in which different journals require the use of different styles in manuscripts submitted for publication.

Science fair projects are presented in a poster-based exhibit format designed to help viewers quickly locate the studies that interest them within a vast sea of work. In many ways, this phase of the project is a valuable introduction and practice for public presentations your child may later be called upon to make in almost any field from business and industry, to government or academia.

The exhibit board itself usually has three sides so that it will stand on its own on a table for viewing. Lightweight 3-sided display boards may be purchased inexpensively at office supply stores. They also can be constructed at home from heavy corrugated cardboard and duct tape, made with foam core board, or even built to be reusable using hinged sections of plywood covered with fabric. If you help your child make a board, you may want to construct a somewhat larger one than the standard office-supply model, so that there will be a little more room for text and pictures. Consult the rules for your particular science fair to learn what size limitations apply in your locale.

The text on the board will be a shorter but essentially similar version of the text presented in the research report, but the board should be made more visually interesting by including things such as photos and colored graphs whenever possible. The research report may have been a bit long-winded. If so, encourage your child to edit the version put on the board. Point out that people viewing the board will not have the time to read much text. If they want more detail, they can pick up the research report, which will always be placed on the table by the exhibit.

Encourage your child to present his or her work in ways that will make it stand out—within the limits of good taste, of course. That well-chosen title will help. Make it large enough to read from some distance away. (Have your child actually try sample letter sizes on a piece of scrap paper before putting anything on the board itself.)

Encourage a clean presentation that is not cluttered with extraneous detail. Computers can be amazing tools for producing large fonts for titles, checking spelling and grammar, and resizing graphs and photos to fit the available board space. However, it is easy to get carried away with excessively ornate typefaces, cute text effects, or other design tools that may detract from the information the presentation is trying to convey.

Counsel your child to pay particular attention to graphs. Carefully recorded observations are important even on their own. However, some of the biggest breakthroughs in science have come when scientists have been able to put together many specific observations to reach a general conclusion, or generalization. To look for such generalizations, it often helps to put the data in a graph.

Good graphs should be bold enough to read from a few feet away. They must also use patterns or colors that stand out from one another. Both directions (the x- and y-axes) need to be labeled clearly. There must be a title, and a key that explains what each line or color represents.

Photos should show their topic in clear focus and without extra background clutter. They each need a clear caption that explains what they show. Either black and white or color photos are acceptable. Take photos that show the processes and results, rather than those that emphasize your child doing the project. The rules and guidelines for some competitions may specify that the student’s face not be identifiable in the photos; others don’t care.

Neatness counts, if not as a specific scoring item, then clearly in the first impression it gives. However, this can be difficult for many children. Here’s a tip for a simple technique your child can use for all sorts of school projects over the years. Don’t write directly on the board at all. Instead, compose each block of text, picture, or other item of the display as a separate unit on a piece of paper. In this way, any errors or serious smudges are easy to correct without affecting other parts of the display.

Mount each of these units on a slightly larger background of colored construction paper or card stock. These then can be moved around freely on the display board. When the arrangement looks pleasing, use a glue stick, double-sided tape, or Velcro™ to affix them in place.

Increasingly, scientists are using computer-based presentation programs such as Microsoft PowerPoint® to prepare posters for scientific conferences. Such programs let them compose the entire posterboard as a single slide, which can be enlarged and printed on oversized paper by specialty photocopy shops.

Pay attention to the order in which materials are presented on the board. They should appear in the same order as in the report—left to right, the same way people read. Place the introduction and methods sections from top to bottom on the left section of the board. Results will take up most of the center section (which is often wider than the sections on either side). Place the discussion and conclusions top to bottom on the right-hand section.

Can your child’s cage full of praying mantises sit on the table by the board? What about the 8-foot-tall robot that he built? The 30 bean plants your daughter watered with various manure-based fertilizers? There are obviously a great many practical, aesthetic, and safety issues to be considered, and there may be institutional limits, as well. Check in advance with teachers and science fair organizers regarding the rules governing displays. When such additional materials are admissible, they can add a great deal of interest to the project display.

Electrical service to the project display tables is usually quite limited. Check in advance. However, if adequate electricity is available, displays can have additional dimensions even when the project itself did not involve power use. Often these include accent lighting to highlight a particular part of the exhibit. Animations, video footage, slides, and the like may be used to display items that fair rules do not allow to be present otherwise. Contestants may be required to furnish a grounded power strip with a fuse or breaker, and to demonstrate that all electrical equipment in the display has been UL listed. Fair rules specify, “Project sounds, lights, odors, or any other display items must not be distracting” (Intel ISEF, 2005, item 9). If you are unsure, consult your science teacher or other fair personnel ahead of time to learn more about how “distracting” might be interpreted in your particular situation. Be sure to have an alternative method of presentation prepared as a backup if there is even a small possibility that your child’s display could be considered distracting.

As the science fair approaches, take time to talk to your child about the judging process. Find out how he or she feels about it. Some students are quite self-possessed and enjoy talking about their work to anyone who will listen. Other students are quite nervous at the prospect of talking about their work with science fair judges, who they see as unknown adults and authority figures.

Usually, judges will have some time to examine the projects without the students present, and then will walk through and talk with students for 5 or 10 minutes each about their projects. Each student can expect to speak with two to four judges, who will come to the exhibit either individually or in small groups.

Science fair judges are volunteers who usually have a strong interest in the sciences themselves, and who want to encourage scientific interest among young students. The judges usually will try hard to put participants at ease, although they still will ask questions that can be difficult to answer. Stress to your child that it is all right to say that he is not sure about something and/or to ask the judges to clarify an unclear question. Your child will have some expertise in his or her project topic area by the time it is finished, but practice question and answer sessions are a good way for him or her to discover any knowledge gaps before the day of the fair. Some particularly alert teachers may schedule in-class interviews with peers for this purpose.

The judges have forms that they fill out to evaluate each project. Their evaluations are based on the project itself and on their talks with the student who conducted it. Judges do their best to provide constructive criticism and feedback to help students understand both the strengths and weaknesses of their work. The average scores obtained by each project determine which projects are awarded various prize ribbons. Some fairs, particularly at the district, state, and national levels, also offer plaques, cash prizes, scholarships, and other incentives to the best work within particular project categories.

For students who intend to participate in the science fair over multiple years, observing projects done by others can be a great way to get new ideas for the following year. Encourage your child not only to examine others’ efforts, but also to make notes in writing about what they like and what they might do differently if it were their project. Stress that the idea is not to borrow someone else’s topic, but rather to share effective ideas. Notes can include anything from details of the exhibit board layout to how a particular question or topic was studied. Prize-winning projects, in particular, can be a good source of inspiration for future efforts.

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