Sample Planning Guides

Sample 1

Topic	Dolphin populations
Purpose of project	Are spotted dolphin populations high enough to sustain hunting?
Anticipated research	Where do spotted dolphins live? How large are the populations? How have populations changed over time? What areas are hunted? What does a typical hunt encompass? How have hunting practices changed over time?
Anticipated analysis	I plan to graph the spotted dolphin population data and the hunting data. I will look for patterns between the graphs that show how the two are related. If an increase in hunting seems to correlate with a lower dolphin population, I may conclude that an observed population change is due to hunting. I will also extrapolate the data to see what could be expected to happen to the spotted dolphin population in the future with and without hunting.
Presentation	PowerPoint presentation

Sample 2

Topic	Early ocean navigation
Purpose of project	I've heard that clocks used to be important to navigation. I want to find out how timekeeping was used by sailors to determine their location on the ocean.
Anticipated research	I plan to research historical ocean navigation. I may also need to look at a timeline of clocks to see what kinds were available to early sailors.
Anticipated analysis	I plan to give an overview of what I learn in my research. I will then give an explanation and some examples of how sailors navigated and hopefully I will be able to describe how clocks were used to help him.
Presentation	I plan to write a report that includes pictures and diagrams to support the explanations.

Sample 3

Topic	Basketball shots
Purpose of project	Is a quadratic function actually a good model for a basketball shot?
Anticipated research	I'm going to make a video in which I will shoot a basketball from many different locations on a basketball court.
Anticipated analysis	I'm going to take several still frames from a single shot. Next, I will overlay a cartesian coordinate plane on each still frame to give a set of coordinates to each ball location. I will then try to sketch and determine the equation of a quadratic function that passes through all of the points. I will repeat this process for a few different shots to see if my results are consistent.
Presentation	PowerPoint that includes my videos and pictures.

Sample 4

Topic	Social Media
Purpose of project	Do boys and girls use social media differently?
Anticipated research	A survey with questions like the following: Do you use social media? What types of social media do you use? Facebook Twitter blogs Internet forums gaming other For how many hours per week do you use social media? For how long have you been using social media? I plan to get at least 20 boys and 20 girls at my school to take the survey.
Anticipated analysis	I plan to calculate percentages for the first two questions' data and I will calculate the mean, median, range, and standard deviation for the third and fourth questions' data. I will compare all of the values of the two groups and look to see if boys and girls use social media differently. Presentation
Presentation	I'm going to make a video. In the video, I'm going to first describe social media and then I'm going to show the survey and some people completing it. After that, I'll give a summary of my data and calculations. Finally, I'll describe what I discovered from my analysis of the survey results.