Experiment Plan Template
Ayoa’s Experiment Plan template will allow you to effectively plan any scientific experiment, as well as record your observations and results in a clear and concise format. Using this template will allow you to think critically about your experiment plan and analyze your results to help aid your learning.
What is an experiment plan?
An experiment plan is commonly used by students throughout their education, particularly during science classes. An experiment plan is put together prior to conducting experiments to allow students to assess what they aim to achieve, as well as record their predictions, outcomes and any useful information regarding the preparation of the experiment.
When planning a science experiment, it’s important to consider the following questions:
What are you trying to find out?
How will you investigate this?
What are your predictions for the experiment?
What other outcomes do you believe are possible?
Why use our Experiment Plan template?
Our Experiment Plan template includes dedicated sections for students to record their answers and take notes when planning their experiment. There’s also space for students to record their results and evaluate their conclusion, which they can fill in once the experiment is over.
Using our Experiment Plan template will help students to think practically about all the elements that need to be considered before conducting an experiment, as well as think critically about what they hope to achieve and what they can learn from the results it produces. The template will also help them learn about the scientific method behind conducting an experiment and how to conduct a successful and fair investigation.
How to use our Experiment Plan template
Students can use our Experiment Plan template before conducting their own experiments, however, it can also be used by teachers to share with their students when working on a science experiment as a class. This will ensure their students can work through the same process.
To access the template, sign up to Ayoa. Once you've signed up, navigate to the homepage to create a new whiteboard, mind map or task board and choose this template from the library.
What are you trying to find out? Begin by evaluating what you hope to achieve from conducting the experiment; what are you trying to find out? Using the sticky notes, lists or text options available in the template, add your experiment aims to this section.
Method – How will you investigate? In this section, explain how you will conduct the experiment. This will be useful for you to refer to during the experiment itself and will help you understand if it had an impact on your end results.
Equipment / materials / resources needed. Here, make a list of all the equipment you’ll need to successfully conduct your experiment. By using lists as shown in the template, you’ll be able to easily add new items to your list; easily drag and drop list items to reorder them to represent their priority.
Hypothesis / expected outcomes. During this planning process, think about what your predictions for the experiment are; what do you expect to happen? Why do you expect this to happen? Making a note of these predictions will help you to better evaluate your results at the end of your experiment.
What other outcomes are possible? It’s also important to consider what other results the experiment could generate. You can then compare these possible outcomes (alongside your predictions) with your final results to see if you can spot any patterns or unexpected outcomes.
Results. Now that you’ve planned your experiment and set out your expectations, it’s time to conduct your experiment. Once your experiment is complete, return to your template and add your answers to the ‘Results’ section. Here, make a note of all the results you found and whether your predictions materialized.
Conclusion. In this final section, think more critically about how your experiment went. Did everything go as expected, or were you surprised by your results? Were there elements of your planning process that had an impact on your results? If so, what would you change (or keep the same) for future experiments? Add all your ideas to the ‘Conclusion’ section of the template.
