Planning a GLOBE project is an exciting endeavor, and just like lesson planning, requires thinking ahead and considering a number of factors.

In prior modules, we provided a variety of tools, including a Lesson and Project Plan Template, GLOBE Educator One-Week Pacing Guides, a GLOBE Research Project Planning Guide, a poster template, and rubrics and review sheets.

Below we provide some additional considerations and tips as you think about planning a GLOBE project.

If you'd like, you can record your project planning ideas on the Lesson Plan and Project Plan template.

Selecting projects: How will you and your students select projects to pursue? There are a number of options:
- Student choice: How will your project plan allow for students to identify a project that is personally meaningful?
- Content (science): Which teaching goals or science standards do you want to address? (Can you still connect the content to something relevant to students and the physical aspects of their communities, for example related to heat and land surfaces, among other visible physical phenomena?)
- Content (other): Is there other content you want to incorporate? In addition to science, students may also be interested in other related phenomena, for example, health issues such as asthma rates, or socio-economic factors such as income levels. Helping students think about the relationship between physical and other phenomena prompts systems thinking and also helps students identify data that can be correlated to look for patterns.
- Process: When having students think about project ideas, will you use a whole class brainstorm, or allow each team to brainstorm? How will you promote collaborative decision-making on the ideas generated so that each student is heard?

Student Teams: How will you set up and guide student teams to maximize learning for all students?
- Setting up student teams: There are multiple ways to set up teams:
  - By topic of interest
  - Based on student strengths and learning goals
  - Randomly, by having students count off; this approach works well when students don't know each other
- Guiding student teams: Once teams have started working on projects, there are ways to maximize learning:
  - Establish the roles for the team.
  - Require teams to plan their work over the several days or weeks of project development, including establishing agreed-upon timelines.
  - Allow students to reflect on their team processes as they go so the students can build awareness of productive processes; teamwork is a valuable skill in itself!

Subject Matter Experts (SME): Engagement with SMEs has been cited by students as one of the most inspiring and exciting aspects of "doing GLOBE". How can you engage scientists or other experts to provide support to the students?
- Career talks: When scientists can talk about their career trajectories and their own projects, it provides motivation to the students and a sense of belonging in science, especially if the students can find something that they have in common with the scientist.
- Supporting science learning:
  - During the development of the project: Scientists can support students in their data analysis, visualization and interpretation, and in practicing their presentations.
  - After project completion: If your students will be able to attend and present at one of the GLOBE student research symposia, there will be SMEs in attendance to discuss the projects with the project teams. If your students will not be attending a symposium, you can still invite scientists and other professionals to review and discuss the projects with the students. If needed, guidance exists on how to orient the SMEs and guide them in providing input to the students.

Assessment: How will students get feedback on their work?
- The prior module presented a variety of project review tools. Here are a few additional review tips:
  - Provide any selected rubrics or review sheets in advance to facilitate students' own planning.
  - Encourage students to check various sections as they go.
  - Encourage a final review using whichever tools are preferred, to help the students look at the whole project, help them see if all the "dots are connected" and develop self-assessment skills.
  - Support peer review processes to promote evaluative and constructive feedback skills.

Timeline:
- As mentioned in the prior module, the GLOBE Research Project Planning Guide offers a timeline for the projects.
- Haven't allotted several weeks to projects? There is still a lot you can do:
  - Stay with one simple protocol that doesn't take too long to carry out.
  - Keep the number of observations to a minimum — students will still get value out of going through the entire research process.
  - Focus more time on a couple of steps in the research process, as all the steps have value. For example:
    - Formulating questions and hypotheses is valuable in itself, as it promotes curiosity and awareness of the surrounding area.
    - Data collection is also valuable in itself, as it takes students outside and allows them to contribute to the GLOBE database.
  - If you can take your students all the way through a research process, try to leave time for sense-making or interpretation toward the end. New educators may find the first two big chunks of work — asking questions and collecting data — to be a big accomplishment, but learning is enhanced when students can also look at their data carefully.
  - Even if you touch lightly on each step in the research process, leave time for the students to prepare for their presentations, as the planning guide suggests. We have found that students sometimes feel unprepared or nervous about presenting their work, but we have never seen a case when students did not rise to the occasion, enjoy the experience, and appreciate the confidence gained.
  - GLOBE Educator One-Week Pacing Guides are great resources that you can use for references.

For more information and guidance on projects from GLOBE, see the GLOBE Student Project Support page. The page has wonderful resources, particularly for making cloud observations and related projects.