Report Your Results
Making your report a winner!

Your report tells what you did and how you did it.

If you follow step-by-step what you did and say it plainly, your report will be both accurate and easy to do.

If you have access to a computer and can find some help from someone who knows how to use one, you might find your report easier to do.

This is because a computer with a word processor will automatically center and space your report. If the computer has a spreadsheet like Excel or Works or one of a lot of others, you can also make great graphs.

The library has computers you can use, and the librarians will give you a little help to get started.

NOTE: Click here to download a blank template that you can simply type your information on.

If your browser displays a "password required" dialog box - simply hit CANCEL and the template will appear.  When the template loads, click on "SAVE" and save it to your computer.

Some of the web links will also give you great ideas for writing your report.

COVER PAGE

Center all information down the middle of the page

3 inches from the top is the where the first line begins

Name of science class

1 inch lower - teacher's name

1 inch lower - research topic

2 inches lower - student name, double space, followed by full address on the next two lines

1 inch below address - the complete date

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Purpose ......................................................................................put page #

Acknowledgements .....................................................................put page #

Materials and Methods ................................................................put page #

Results ........................................................................................put page #

Conclusions .................................................................................put page #

Bibliography ................................................................................put page #

PURPOSE

What do you plan to do?

What is your hypothesis?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Identify people or companies or anywhere that helped you to do this project, such as "colleges, etc."

MATERIALS & METHODS

List of materials used and how you assembled them together

Step-by-step details of how you conducted your experiment. Use charts, graphs, photos, art, anything to clarify your thoughts and work.

RESULTS

This is the outcome of your experiment. Also, the data, findings and results. Log of daily work on experiment.

CONCLUSION

Talk about findings and results. Do they agree with your hypothesis? If not, do you see where they disagree? Look at results. Your thoughts here are very important to judges.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alphabetical listing of all resources

Jenna's Diary

February 19th
I took my notebook and my instructions for writing the report to the library today.

I also brought along a blank disk my brother gave me. We don't have a computer at home, but he had some disks so he let me use one.

When I got to the library, the librarian helped me download the blank word processing template from the SF Toolkit site the library has on their web pages. The template lets you just put your information in for your report.

NOTE: If your browser displays a "password required" dialog box - simply hit CANCEL and the template will appear.  When the template loads, click on "SAVE" and save it to your computer.

I saved the template to my disk, then I started filling in the information. It took me about an hour, writing isn't easy for me. I saved the draft to my disk, and the librarian showed me how to print it out.

I took the disk and the printout home.

February 20th
I sat down with my mom, and we looked at my draft. Mom showed me where I left some stuff out, and I wrote the changes down in my notebook.

February 22nd
I went back to the library today. The librarian helped me open the word processing copy of my report and I made the changes that mom and I talked about. I saved the document and printed it out.

Then the librarian helped me create a spreadsheet.

I don't know anything about spreadsheets. The librarian helped me print it out and I took it home to ask my dad to help me. He uses a spreadsheet to manage his business.

February 23rd
After dinner, dad sat me down to help me with the spreadsheet.

"Well Jenna, you need to show the growth of grass in each different type of soil."

"I've got all the numbers in my notebook, dad."

"Great, lets look at it." He looked at my notebook for several minutes then said, "You need to have columns for each type of soil, and use the rows for the data from each date. You also need a column to show how much water you added."

I took a ruler and drew four lines down a notebook page. At the top I wrote the four different types of soil. Then, I put a date on each line down the page.

"Okay, Jenna. Now you can go to the library and enter the data into the spreadsheet."

February 25th
I was so excited to see if I could make the computer spreadsheet look like the paper model I drew. I used the library's computer to fill it out.

I labeled column A "Date". Then I labeled column B "Clay"; column C "Gravel"; column C "Soil" and column D "Sandy".

Next, I put the dates down column A, starting in row 2. I stared with January 26 and went down until February 15. I then put all my measurements into the spreadsheets. When there was no data, I just left the cell of the spreadsheet blank.

When I finished, this is what it looked like:

The librarian then helped me print it out.

February 27th
I took my spreadsheet to Mr. Eisnaugle at school.

"This is very good Jenna," he said. "Let's go down to the computer lab and Mrs. Anderson can help us turn the data into a graph."

Mrs. Anderson sat with me. After opening the spreadsheet, she helped me turn it into a graph.

Now I felt like I was ready to put my presentation together.