Review Notes

• Before beginning to write the conclusion, kids need to look back over the parts of the report they have already written. In particular, kids should look at what the goal of the science research or experiment was and what particular questions they had at the beginning of the project. For an experiment, kids should also review what the hypothesis was and whether or not the results supported the hypothesis. Kids should look over the notes they took while they were studying the topic or the results they got in the experiment to see what they learned.
  
  

Summarize Content

• Help kids write a few sentences to remind the reader of what has already been written about in the science paper. One way to do this is to have them fill in the rest of a few sentences. These can include, "The purpose of this project was," "The findings showed," "The most important things I learned were," or another sentence of your choosing. The goal is to begin the conclusion by focusing the students on the key points of the research project or experiment.
  
  

Compare to Hypothesis

• If the science conclusion is for an experiment, a critical part of the conclusion is to compare the results to the initial hypothesis. For this part of the conclusion, help the students locate the hypothesis and restate it. Then help the students write a sentence that specifically addresses whether the results supported the hypothesis. If the results did not support the hypothesis, have the student offer a possible explanation of why not or compare and contrast the results to other researchers' results.
  
  

Explore Future Possibilities

• For conclusions related to experiments, ask students to brainstorm a few ways that their experiment could have been better. For example, the sample size could have been larger, they could have measured things differently or they could have run the experiment over a longer time frame. Have students write one sentence that suggests a way to improve this experiment. For an experiment or research project, have students brainstorm a few additional ideas about similar topics to research or perform experiments on. In the conclusion, have the student write at least one sentence that describes one of these future areas of study.