Practice, Practice, Practice

From Stepping Up

What Judges Want

Stepping Up Guide

Section Home Aesthetics: The Board How to Deal with a Bad Judge Practice, Practice, Practice Talking to Judges: The Presentation The Judge Wish List Top 10: Mistakes Judges Make Top 10: Mistakes People Make During Judging

Practicing your presentation is CRUCIAL! While you don't want your presentation to sound memorized, you don't want it to be unprofessional as well. Every judge has some basic or typical questions that they ask and you're best off thinking about the answer beforehand as opposed to when they ask the question.

Be sure that you have the ability to explain your project to someone who doesn't know about what you've been doing. Practice with a friend and make sure that they understand the basics of what you did in under ten minutes. If you can do this with them, you're in good shape for judging.

We have developed a resource known as the Virtual Judge. Try and make use of this tool when you are practicing for judging.

Here are some of the questions you should be thinking about

• How is your project innovative?

• What are the applications of your project?

• Where are the error bars on your graphs? What statistics did you use?

• How will your project be sustained in the future? What’s the next step of scientific inquiry?

• What are other people doing in your field? (note: bring journal references to your project)

• What were some of the difficulties that you encountered? How did you overcome them?

• Who was working with you on this project?

• What is the most interesting thing you have learned through your project?

• What were your hypotheses at the onset of the project? Were they disproved or proved?

• Be very detailed in your explanations. Being brief and concise is 1000x better than “fluff”.

• Try to impress judges with your knowledge. Explain methodology, statistics, charts, graphs and data tables. Explain how the raw data was transformed into a graph, then into a conclusion.

• Talk about problems and how you solved them. If someone can sense persistence and focus in your work, they will be impressed.

• Read lots of literature on your topic. Be able to discuss multiple facets of your field.

• Make sure to practice explaining your project in layman’s terms so that anyone can understand it. If you are doing a molecular biology project, explain it to your physics teacher at recess. Explain it to your friends, parents, etc. Ask for feedback on clarity, etc. Note how the ISEF Best in Fair Winner’s presentation was made easily understandable, even though it was highly complex.

• Practice until it becomes natural. Your presentation should flow like a conversation.