Design your Research Project

Once each student, or group of students, has developed their own research question, ask them to design a procedure to collect the necessary data or information. Have them fill out the following worksheet and turn in for your feedback/approval. As your students' investigations continue, encourage them to share their findings or frustrations with you and do some mutual problem-solving as necessary.

You Do the Science

1.	Ask yourself an interesting question.
	After observing birds for some time (at feeder areas or in schoolyards, parks, nestboxes or backyards), what kinds of things have you wondered as you watch the birds? Brainstorm with the whole class or in small groups.
2.	Come up with a testable guess (hypothesis) to answer your question.
3.	Decide which data you need to collect to answer your question.
4.	Decide which procedure you will use to collect data.
	Remember each of the Lab's Citizen Science projects has an entire database to draw on. Use one or more of these to answer your question on a variety of geographic scales, or to address additional aspects of bird biology related to your question(s). Remember to devise a standard procedure for any data you collect yourself.
5.	Do your experiment and collect data or view and copy your data from online databases.
	How will you keep track of data? (What will your data tables look like?) How will you represent the data? (What kind of graphs will you make?) How will you use your data to answer your question? (What do your graphs and tables show?)
6.	Reach a conclusion.
	All students in your group should understand and agree with the conclusion. If you don't agree, what other data could help you reach agreement?

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