Developing skills for the Extended Project Qualification
Activity 3: Planning your project
Teacher notes
Learning Outcome: you will be able to produce a detailed EPQ project plan in a suitable format
Student activity
Teacher Notes
Find the assessment criteria for planning in the EPQ specification
that you are using. Producing evidence for planning involves the
skill of breaking down a project into its separate tasks and roles. In
this activity, you will critique an outline plan and develop ideas on
how to present a project plan.
This activity is particularly
suitable for small group work. If
carried out by an individual
student, they could discuss their
ideas at a mentoring session.
Sadie decided to carry out a practical investigation using an idea
from the IntoBiology website on medicinal plants at
http://intobiology.org.uk/student-project-medicinal-plants-andthe-inhibitory-effects-of-conifers/. She decided to present her
findings as a scientific poster.
Knowing when her final report had to be submitted to her teacher,
she planned the main stages between the start of her EPQ course
and the following March. Her planning is below:
Sadie Lawson EPQ planning
While all the points made in the
photocopiable list in the table
1) October: Write question to lead investigation
2) December: Carry out practical work.
3) January: find references about medicinal plants. Write summary
of research.
below could apply to this plan,
the positioning of the research
after the project title has been
produced, and after the practical
work has been carried out, is a
problem worth emphasising.
4) February and March: make poster to show findings of the
experiment.
Breaking the tasks down into
sub-tasks, as suggested in this
activity, should involve allocating
Protocol for practical: Producing an extract from conifer needles
timings and suggested methods
for analysing and presenting data
Select the conifer which you plan to investigate, e.g. pine, cypress, spruce
or yew. You will need to source your plant material from an appropriate
Science & Plants for Schools: www.saps.org.uk
(in the poster) .
Activity 3 – teacher notes: p. 1
place, taking into consideration the environmental effects of taking plant
material from the wild. You will also need to reflect on how to can be sure
that you have correctly identified the species you are testing.
Any plan needs to show how a
standard protocol is being used
or adapted to answer a specific
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Take 2.5g of needles or cones and grind in a mortar and pestle with
30cm3 of sterile distilled water
Filter the extract through muslin and pour into a clean labelled bottle
Protocol: Investigating effects of conifer extracts on seedling growth
question as part of a longer
investigation.
Students must reference sources
of any information even if they
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Pre-label Petri-dishes with each conifer extract to be used (do
replicates of each extract)
Place filter paper into Petri-dish base and moisten with 1ml of
sterile water
Weigh out 0.3g of cress seeds and scatter evenly onto prelabelled Petri-dishes
Water each dish with 2cm3 of conifer extract or sterile water
(control)
Place under light bank
Water daily with 1cm3 of extract or sterile water
Each day record % germination of seeds and from day 2 onwards
measure average root and shoot length
Plot results showing % inhibition of germination, root and shoot
growth
adapt it – this protocol is from the
IntoBiology website.
The plan needs to state where
and when the plant material is to
be collected.
The resource and consumables
list needs to go to the lab
technician well ahead of starting
the practical work.
This plan would need to include
Protocol: Investigating the effects of conifer extracts on bacteria
To do this, you will prepare agar plates suitable for growing lawns of
bacteria, place different plant extracts in wells on the plates and measure
any zone of inhibition. The methods for this activity can be found in the
project starter ‘Antimicrobials’.
the time and resources needed
for growing the chosen
microorganisms.
To discuss:
1) Suggest any ways that Sadie’s plan could be improved to
meet the EPQ assessment criteria for planning.
2) Once your group has agreed on the top four
improvements needed, ask your teacher for the list of
The list (1-12) is on Page 4 of
these notes. This should be
photocopied and provided for
each group.
suggestions provided, to check against your own ideas for
improvements.
i Make a note of any ideas that you did not think about in
your discussions.
ii Make any changes to your top four ‘improvements’ that
Science & Plants for Schools: www.saps.org.uk
Activity 3 – teacher notes: p. 2
you think are needed.
To do:
3) Allocate one of the plan stages 2) – 4) to each individual or
pair of students in your group.
4) Produce a detailed stage plan: working on the stage you
have been allocated, decompose the main task into an
appropriate number of sub-tasks (individual steps). This
The list of ‘improvements’ may
be useful here.
sequence of sub-tasks will show that you have thought
about the planning of this stage in detail.
5) Back in your group, swap the detailed stage plans. Each
student or pair of students should now comment on the
detail and quality of another student’s detailed stage plan.
Using a coloured pen, write onto the plan any further
changes that you think would help it to meet the EPQ
assessment criteria. Return the comments to the original
student/s.
To discuss:
Some project planning software
6) In your group, discuss the best format for presenting and
tracking your plans. The format should allow you to show
when tasks are completed. You may need to add notes on
any updates and changes to your plan as you progress
may be overkill for an EPQ
project – but setting out the plan
in an editable table in a word
processing or spreadsheet
package may be useful.
through the EPQ project tasks. There may be software that
can help with this.
Reflecting on learning:
7) List the key features of a good EPQ project plan.
8) List the aspects of good planning that you think you are
confident about, and those which will you need to pay
more attention to.
Science & Plants for Schools: www.saps.org.uk
Activity 3 – teacher notes: p. 3
Planning tips for EPQ projects
1 Some tasks need to take place in advance of the main project activities. For example, you’ll
need to organise sufficient consumables and equipment for the practical well ahead of the
planned practical work. This may involve submitting an order to technicians.
2 It is useful to add other important deadlines in your life into your EPQ plan, so you can
prioritise your time during busy periods.
3 There will be important dates and deadlines to add to your plan, such as meetings with your
mentor and completion of paperwork for the awarding body.
4 Research and reading around the topic for your project should start ahead of deciding the final
project title and should carry on informing your project as you proceed.
5 Plans should include an estimate of the amount of time needed for individual tasks.
6 You need to show that you are going beyond carrying out practical protocols that are available
on a website, for example by adapting them to answer your specific question.
7 Tasks sometimes depend on completion of other tasks (dependencies). Deadlines for these key
tasks need to be shown on a plan.
8 Tasks need to be broken down into detailed sub-tasks so that the timeline, dependencies
(tasks which reply on other tasks being completed) amount of time needed for a task and any
people involved are shown.
9 An EPQ plan needs to be set out in a way that allows any changes and updates to be shown.
These will be monitored by your mentor against the original plan.
10 Any project artefact or outcome needs careful planning to identify time, materials, people
and meetings etc. that are needed.
11 A plan should include details of the areas that you need to research and possible sources of
information.
12 If a project involves consulting experts, time for this should be built into the planning.
Science & Plants for Schools: www.saps.org.uk
Activity 3 – teacher notes: p. 4