Display Boards

Display boards are one of the last things we put together for Science Fair. This is where students get to display all of their hard work in one place for everyone to see! Generally, all boards should have a color scheme that consists of no more than 3 colors, any more than that tends to distract people!

The board needs labels. These are the section headings that go above each piece that will be on the board. These are going to be rather large, usually around 72 pt font is good. Students are allowed to use different fonts, but all labels should be the same font and it should be a font that is easy to read. Otherwise, people aren't paying attention to your work, they are trying to figure out what something says. Labels may also have different colors (that stick to the chosen color scheme), but beware of light colors that are hard to read.

Next, they will need to slightly reformat all of the parts that we did to go on the board. As long as they have everything saved in one place, this should be pretty easy. Unfortunately, I'm hearing from several students that they don't know where things are saved, flash drives have been lost, etc. If this is the case, the parts will have to be retyped using the final drafts they turned in. The pieces on the board should NOT have a heading or a title (the label above is the title). The font should be large enough to be read by a person standing back a bit, generally 18-22 pt is a good size. They may change the font from Times New Roman, but it should still be pretty simple and easy to read. Too many students get excited and change it to something that looks cool, but is hard to read. Again, this takes away from their project. 

They must have their purpose, variables/operational definition, hypothesis, materials, procedures, data tables, graphs (should be 2), data analysis, and conclusion on the board. The background information is not required, but may be included. Pictures, diagrams, and parts of their experiment they wish to display also make nice additions. However, displays may not include any food, liquids, or anything hazardous.

The title for their project will be centered on the board and should be large, catchy, and look nice. This is what gets everyone's attention, so we want it to look great!