Group 4 Project

2014-2015 Richwoods High School

Content

• What is the Group 4 Project?

• IB requirements

• Timeline

• Topics and Teams

• What is expected of you

• Storyboard for presentation

• Personal Skills and documentation

What is the Group 4 Project? • Group 4 subjects (the sciences) base understanding on experiment – emphasis of this project is on the process of a scientific investigation

• Emphasis is on interdisciplinary cooperation and collaboration – each discipline brings a special perspective and expertise to the group

• Sole IB assessment of Personal Skills

IB Group 4 Requirements (the “why” you are doing this)

• Demonstrate ICT (Information and Communication and Technology) skills

• Address moral, ethical, social, economic, and environmental implications of using science and technology

• Show how the different disciplines all relate to a single scientific issue

• Show you can use the processes of the scientific method

Time Line

•Planning Stage – 2 hrs After selecting a focused topic, the activities to be carried out must be clearly defined before moving to action phase

•Action Stage – 6 hrs

•Evaluation Stage – 2 hr Powerpoints, videos, scale models etc. will be presented in class May 20-21. Mr. Bowlby and other administrators will be invited.

Planning Stage

Planning Stage

• Teachers divide students into groups

• Teachers supply topic(s) First Meeting

• Students choose focused topic (define the problem) and develop action plan

– Background

• Data base research (ICT)

• Contact People & Organizations (ICT)

– Experiment or scale model (ICT)

Planning Stage – Action Plan Second Meeting Choose meeting leader and recorder • Brainstorm on possible factors and approaches

• What are the issues for biology, chemistry, physics?

• Narrow this down to specific issue(s) to be investigated

• Who will do what? By when? With what help?

Main Topic: The Science of Food

Students are choosing teams this year. Each group has to

have people representing chemistry and biology.

Teams

Action Stage

• Carry out investigations

• Conduct any research

Evaluation

• Put together power-point presentation

• Include digital pictures, videos

• Load power-point onto Group 4 section of my website

• At symposium, present power-point along with any other graphics or posters

Story Board for Presentation

A template is provided to help you organize your project and presentation.

This way, you will know what is expected of you and as you fill in the “blanks”.

Define the Project

• What are you doing?

Why are you doing it?

• See slide on IB requirements.

• What interests you about your choice of project

• (Anyone who says they are doing this just because it is an assignment will lose credit)

Why should people care about your project?

• What is the significance of your investigation?

What did you do?

• Outline or diagram the process in 1-6 slides • Show how your investigative process fit into

the scientific method: – identify problem – brainstorm ideas – focus problem – research background info – gather data (either by contacts or designing and

conducting a scale model expt.) – present data – make conclusions – make recommendations

Who was on the team and what did each person do?

• 1-2 slides

How did your team specifically address issues from biology, chemistry, and/ or physics

• Describe in 1-3 slides

What experts or outside data sources did you access?

• 1-3 slides

What experiment(s) did you conduct?

• 1-3 slides with pictures

How did you specifically use ICT (information,

communication, technology)?

• Data bases • Communication with experts • Data logging • Spreadsheets • Graphs and graphing software • Digital images or video • Presentation software

What did you discover?

• 3-5 slides

• Facts are friendly

• Show graphs, charts, data or quotes to support the outcome of your investigation.

Conclusions

• Bullet point summary of results

Why is this important?

• Bullet point explanation

Personal Skills

Personal Skills • Approach a project with self-motivation and follow it through to completion

• Ability to work with others in a group situation and integrate the views of others

• Show awareness of your own strengths and weaknesses and learn about yourself from this experience

Self-motivation and follow-through to completion

• You are expected to get your assigned tasks done “yesterday”

• Non-completion reflects poorly on the entire group

• One person or a subset of the group doing most, if not all, of the work reflects poorly on the entire group

Work with others in a group situation and integrate the

views of others

• You MUST demonstrate that you can work in a team situation

• Collaboration with input from all disciplines is a key success factor

• You MUST show consideration from all disciplines

Self-reflection of your own strengths and weaknesses and how you put yourself outside

your comfort zone • This project is designed to be a

learning experience

• You are expected to tackle some personal weakness

Personal Skills - Documentation

• Each participant is required to hand in a confidential paper with documentation of specific examples on how you personally met or did not meet these personal skills goals

Documentation for IB

• Each participant is required to complete a summary of his/her work that will be submitted to IB as part of your official biology lab portfolio.