Ag Science Project help!

kgebhi

I'm going into 6th year next week and my project isn't anywhere near good or finished! I don't know how to expand the information that I already have and I'm really stressed out about it. I'm dedicating the next few days to trying to get a lot of it done but I need some help.

For the first part of the project, the identification, how much information should I include next to each photo? So far I only have a line or two (for cows, sheep, pigs, plants and phyla) but is this enough, or should I have a paragraph for each photo?

How long should each part be? I'm trying to aim for 20-30 pages for crops, dairy and grassland individually but is that too much or not enough? Can I add newspaper clippings etc., and is it okay to have pages with only photos on them and no text, or is this seen as the student just trying to make it longer?

Also, to those of you who have corrected projects, what makes a project stand out to you? I really want this project to be good and I don't want to be constantly bombarding my teacher.

Thank you

alaskayoung

You have plenty of time to finish and perfect it so I wouldn't be getting too stressed about it yet! It's great that you're getting it out of the way now though as the majority of people are left finishing it off in Feb/March when you're busy enough with orals/mocks etc.

You can find the guidelines for the project for students and teachers on the state exams commission website pretty easily where it states the requirements and breaks down the allocation of marks. It provides information on the layout and sections you must include but after that you're pretty much free to to write about whatever you like as long as it's relevant.

As regards the plant/animal identification, technically it is only required that you identify 10 plants and animals and state the family they belong to in order to receive full marks. However, it is expected that you write some information on each to accompany it, just general information, their relevance to agriculture etc. I had about half to 3/4 of an A4 page on each and then a photograph, drawing, pressed sample of the plant etc. Again, none of this is required by the marking scheme but if you're looking for a high grade you need to show that a a lot of thought and effort went into it.

It's really important also that everything you include is 100% your own work. It's so easy to tell when people just copy & paste chunks of text from Wikipedia and other similar sites. Read through the pages, take some notes and then write the information in your own words. You also learn a lot more by going through this process.

The length of people's projects varies a lot. The whole "quality over quantity" definitely stands true but generally you'll find that the longer projects will obtain the higher marks. It's hard to give a set number of pages per section as font size, number of pictures included etc. will have a great impact on this, but anything from 20 onwards should be adequate. My sections ranged from 35-50 but I had a lot of photographs so that doesn't mean much. Yes, newspaper clippings are great to include, again if they are relevant to the topic being discussed and I had lots of pages with only photographs on them.

To make your project stand out it's just really important to make it as personal as possible. I cannot stress this enough. Include lots and lots of photographs taken by yourself or even better with you in them, talk about your own personal experiences from your visits to farms. The corrector doesn't want to read through pages and pages of detailed information obviously taken from books or the internet. He wants to read YOUR opinions on things, what YOU've learned while doing the project. Include things that no one else will have in their project. Keeping it personal will also help immensely if you are chosen to do the oral later on. My teacher told me that I got 100% in my project so if you have any other questions I'd be happy to help

kgebhi

alaskayoung wrote: »

You have plenty of time to finish and perfect it so I wouldn't be getting too stressed about it yet! It's great that you're getting it out of the way now though as the majority of people are left finishing it off in Feb/March when you're busy enough with orals/mocks etc.

You can find the guidelines for the project for students and teachers on the state exams commission website pretty easily where it states the requirements and breaks down the allocation of marks. It provides information on the layout and sections you must include but after that you're pretty much free to to write about whatever you like as long as it's relevant.

As regards the plant/animal identification, technically it is only required that you identify 10 plants and animals and state the family they belong to in order to receive full marks. However, it is expected that you write some information on each to accompany it, just general information, their relevance to agriculture etc. I had about half to 3/4 of an A4 page on each and then a photograph, drawing, pressed sample of the plant etc. Again, none of this is required by the marking scheme but if you're looking for a high grade you need to show that a a lot of thought and effort went into it.

It's really important also that everything you include is 100% your own work. It's so easy to tell when people just copy & paste chunks of text from Wikipedia and other similar sites. Read through the pages, take some notes and then write the information in your own words. You also learn a lot more by going through this process.

The length of people's projects varies a lot. The whole "quality over quantity" definitely stands true but generally you'll find that the longer projects will obtain the higher marks. It's hard to give a set number of pages per section as font size, number of pictures included etc. will have a great impact on this, but anything from 20 onwards should be adequate. My sections ranged from 35-50 but I had a lot of photographs so that doesn't mean much. Yes, newspaper clippings are great to include, again if they are relevant to the topic being discussed and I had lots of pages with only photographs on them.

To make your project stand out it's just really important to make it as personal as possible. I cannot stress this enough. Include lots and lots of photographs taken by yourself or even better with you in them, talk about your own personal experiences from your visits to farms. The corrector doesn't want to read through pages and pages of detailed information obviously taken from books or the internet. He wants to read YOUR opinions on things, what YOU've learned while doing the project. Include things that no one else will have in their project. Keeping it personal will also help immensely if you are chosen to do the oral later on. My teacher told me that I got 100% in my project so if you have any other questions I'd be happy to help

Thank you!! This really helped!