Big Davie entered the lab, sleeves rolled up, pulling on his lab coat. His arms were loaded with apples, "Ripped these from ma granny's gairden Miss", he offered by way of an explanation. His face was full of energy, his brain was buzzing with questions and his lab book was opened and ready to go.
That's right...it was project time!
SQA state you should spend "a minimum of 15 hours on this". Risk assessments must be carried out first. You should keep a "lab book" to record everything you do during an experiment - this includes molarity of solutions, masses of materials added, pH buffers used, incubation times and all results produced.
The project report should be between 3000-3600 words in length, excluding the title page, contents page, tables of data, graphs, diagrams, calculations, references, acknowledgements and appropriate appendices.
Click on the button below to access the SQA document that relates to the AH Biology assessment task. This is freely accessible to download but you may find pages 18-29 of the document (The Candidate Guide) the most useful.
There are many questions you need to ask prior to choosing a project. Here are a few that I encourage my own students to think about.
Take time to read through the two projects on the SQA Understanding Standards website. They provide an excellent source of information when combined with the Marker Commentary.
Let's consider the report you have to produce on your project. When you consider how you achieve marks, you can reflect more fully on a suitable project choice.
I developed the booklet below during my work with an organisation called SSERC. They focus on developing practical work for schools. This booklet contains examples of experiments that might interest you. You should not repeat these experiments exactly - you will need to carry out your own planning, thinking about confounding variables and how you might adapt a protocol to ensure your conclusions are valid; you need to think about sample size; and many other things. But this might help you get started.
Towards the end of the booklet, I look have used the SQA Course Reports to highlight areas that are often done well by pupils, and areas that pupils find challenging - have a look at this and see how you can produce the best possible project you are capable of, learning from past experiences.
And, as always, chat with your own teacher about your plans 😀.