What I check for at the end of the semester, so you can check for it first.
Contents
- Your First Entry present, from the first week
- An entry for each investigation you ran — there are ten of them
- Every one of those entries contains a prediction recorded before the measurement, with a reason attached
- Raw readings written down, not only the calculated answers
- At least one entry where a number came out wrong and you chased it
- Notes from at least two discussions, saying what moved
- A Showing Growth comparison from mid-semester
- Final Reflection completed
- Dates on everything, in order, readable by a stranger
How it is assessed
| Criterion | What I am looking for |
|---|---|
| Selection | A range, not only the entries where you looked good |
| Evidence | Numbers with units and the right significant figures — not adjectives |
| Quantitative honesty | Differences compared against your uncertainty, not eyeballed |
| Reasoning | Mechanism attempted, not just the pattern described |
| Limitations | Named by you, sized, and with the direction they pushed |
| Growth | Change shown with two pieces side by side, not asserted |
| Care | Organised well enough that a reader can follow it cold |
The two rows that separate this course from last year
Quantitative honesty. Grade 10 accepted “the two results were about the same”. Grade 11 does not, because “about the same” is a claim about precision made without consulting the instrument. The replacement is short and mechanical: unchanged to within the balance’s resolution of 0.01 g. It takes one clause and it turns an impression into a finding.
Limitations with a direction. “Some product was lost” tells me you know a limitation exists. “Product left on the filter paper can only lower the mass we recovered, so 88% is a floor and the true yield is higher” tells me you know what it did, and it makes your conclusion more useful rather than less. Every limitation pushes the answer one way. Work out which way and say so — Writing a Lab Report has the full version.
The five-minute audit
Open three entries at random. If none of them contains a number with a unit, that is your gap. If none contains a sentence beginning “I was wrong about”, that is your other one. And if every number in all three is quoted to the same number of decimal places regardless of what measured it, go and read Significant Figures in Practice before you hand it in.
Standard to aim at: What a Strong Entry Looks Like.