After each major investigation, add an entry. Four questions, briefly:
- What did you actually do? Two sentences.
- What surprised you? A result, a difficulty, something about your group.
- What would you change? Be specific — “measure at three distances instead of one”, not “be more careful”.
- What does this connect to? Another lab, a concept, something outside school.
An example worth imitating
In the photosynthesis lab our 40 cm discs never floated at all, and we assumed we had done something wrong. Comparing with two other groups, everyone’s 40 cm trial was slow — ours was just slowest because our lamp was dimmer. What surprised me is that I nearly threw away a correct result because it did not match what I expected. Next time I will check with another group before deciding my data is wrong.
That entry is worth more than a perfect report, because it shows thinking about thinking.