Advice on Project Boards

• This Project board, your research report and your notebook are all the judges have to evaluate your project in grades K-8. High School students have the opportunity to be interviewed as part of the judging process. But the interview is often only a tie breaker. Middle School students are encouraged to attend the interview sessions, but their interviews are after judging results have already been turned in.
  
  
• The board should be neat, easy to read, and concise. Project boards that are filled with lots of detailed written material take too much time to read and tend to be difficult to judge. Use photos and graphs where possible. Leave apparatus home if possible. Be sure to check the Unacceptable for Display.
  
  
• Do make it look good, but computer generated text or graphics are not essential to a good looking easy to read project board. It is the substance of what is there; your Problem Statement, Methods, Data Collection and Analysis, and Conclusions that influence judges. An artistically beautiful board with bad data collection and analysis will not become a winner.
  

• When you setup your board for judging try to use pictures, rather than the actual apparatus used in your project, It is what you have written in your abstract and notebook and what you show on your board that is judged. “Stuff” sitting on a project table has little effect on the judges, so use photos or drawings if possible.
  

Go to Setting Up Project Board and scroll down to see some excellent examples of winning project boards.