Final Reflection

            Doing this project has been a lovely experience. My three teammates and I all collaborated well, and brought new ideas to the table throughout our research and experiment. Together, we clarified and defined our experiment by working off each others’ new ideas from the different fields of science. A week after we were put into groups, the four of us decided that we wanted to tackle the understanding of one of the debates in the sports sciences: does stretching really improve fitness level?

            Organization and communication in the club was very effectively managed. The first time we met as a group the day we were put into groups, we suggested making a Facebook group, which I did that night. Since then, it has been our communication tool, where each of the group members can post relevant information that was found, discuss experiment ideas, and plan the next time we would meet.

            One of the major hurdles we had to overcome as a group was time management and organization. This was especially true for us, as 3 of the four team members would be going to Portugal for the MUN trip from the 4^th to the 11^th of November. It is for this reason that we only met six times. We ended up having to have Skype conversations on two occasions. However, this was as effective as meeting in person as we were able to discuss the next steps of our project. Every time we met, we were focused and disciplined to manage our time effectively, since we were all so busy with other school work. When we came back from Portugal, we already had most of our work done (experiments were done and graphs were made), which meant we were really on top of everything that needed to be done. We only needed to meet to make the PowerPoint and practice, which didn’t take long as all the research was done.

            The group dynamic was very efficient, as we have all become friends. Everyone in the group engaged and contributed in the project equally. No one had to be chased down to upload information or complete their share of the work; everyone was willing to put in the effort. We all worked really well with each other, which not only helped make our presentation successful, but made the entire process more enjoyable and fun. By the end of this project, we all appreciated each other, and were grateful to have a group that was so much less stressed and chaotic than the others!

            To improve the project, I would have only wanted to do more extensive experiments to support our ideas further. Our sample size was so small simply because we did not have the time to do a more thorough investigation, as our three members were going to be in Portugal. Other than this minor point, I can reflect that this experience has been a positive one for me, that I’ve been able to enjoy because of my group members that all put in the time and effort to make our project one that was successful. 

Final meeting before presentations

Over the course of this week, each of our group members has posted 2-3 slides on our facebook page that is on their topic (that they chose). Eminet, who had the 'master slideshow', compiled them all together into one. This was done really effectively, since we all posted our slides before the deadline we had set, which was today!

This afternoon, my group and I met to do the final touches on our powerpoint presentation. We finished writing introductions and conclusions, and clarified who would be saying what/when. Once we got organized, we timed ourselves presenting our slideshow. We made it to 15 minutes, which is perfect. All that is needed to do now is to print out certain scripts of what each of us is saying, so that we are 100% prepared for the presentation tomorrow.

To show our teachers how much of a team we've begun, we've also planned to do high fives/handshakes before and after the presentation, as well as support each other if someone forgets to say something or messes up.

Hopefully tomorrow will go well!

Preparing for the presentation

Last night, my group talked on our facebook group about when we should meet to further plan our presentation. Everyone was free today!

My group members and I stayed afterschool for an hour and a half to discuss the next stage of our Group 4 project: the planning of the presentation.

The first thing we did was make an outline of the major points we will be discussing:

Intro:
- what is stretching? What does it do to your body?
- How different stretches affect different parts of the body
- Presentation plan: our main question was "Does stretching really improve one's athletic ability?"

1. Stretching and how it affects flexibility (Include studies that were found online)
2. Our experiment on stretching...what did the data reveal?
3. Stretching and how it affects strength (what do studies suggest?)

Concluding remarks.

Together, we discussed who would want to present what. We want to make it as balanced as possible, so we will each have a 'role'. Since I researched about strength, I will be speaking about it during the presentation. Moses will be speaking about what experiments we did, while Sarah and Eminet will be speaking about flexibility (it is the biggest part of the presentation because stretching and flexibility are really interconnected. Therefore it was only right to have two people talk about it!). The introduction will be done by two people, and the conclusion by the other two. This way we will all have equal speaking time in the presentation.

During the meeting, we discussed that we will each do our own powerpoint slides for our topics individually, and will post them on the facebook page as soon as possible. Then, we will combine them all together to make a master powerpoint.

We will be meeting before Saturday to do a runthrough of our presentation to make sure that it is within the time limit of 15 minutes. 

Action: doing the experiments

On the 4th of November, I met with my 3 other group members after-school in the gym to do our experiments. We will all be the subjects for the experiment; two girls, two boys, all relatively the same age and at the same fitness level.

First, we did the sit-and-reach (FLEXIBILITY) and the vertical jump (STRENGTH) without stretching. Using Eminet's laptop, the data was collected. To make our results more accurate, each person did 3 trials. This is the control group of the experiments.

Next, we stretched. We did a variety of stretches that worked different parts of our bodies, each for 45 seconds. Then, the sit-and-reach and vertical jump was done; the variable group. Again, data was collected.

Now that our raw data is collected, it must be processed to demonstrate the difference in scores when stretching wasn't and was done.

Final planning

Tonight, my group members and I had another Skype conversation to finalize our next few steps of the project.

Here are the different topics of our discussion:

- Research: by now, each one of us has done research on our chosen field of sport (endurance, strength, flexibility and agility). We found out that endurance and flexibility have the most relation to stretching, and therefore we decided to focus on these two areas. We may still refer to agility and endurance in our final presentation, though the research will not be further developed. This decision means that our experiments will be done to see the impact of stretching on endurance and flexibility. To organize all of the research that was done, we have all agreed to upload our Word documents to the Facebook group page, and then Eminet can compile everything together into one document.

- Experiments: Although Eminet found an experiment that was done online related to stretching, we have decided as a group to conduct our own experiments. As we will be focusing on strength and flexibility, our experiments will be the sit and reach (flexibility) and seeing how high the subject can jump (strength). Tomorrow afterschool we will be meeting together in the gym to conduct all our experiments and input the data into an excel document. Our control group will be doing stretching, our variable group will be not doing stretching.

- Once everything is doing, we will be making a powerpoint presentation. As 3/4 group members (including myself) will be travelling to Portugal for an MUN conference from Tuesday to Monday, we will try to get as much done before we leave as we can. The presentations are done the week we get back, which means that that week will be very rushed and busy. Tonight we talked about how we should get an outline of the powerpoint done by Tuesday night so that we have a general idea of what we want to do. We want to make it a very visual and interesting presentation, which will include graphs, images, and videos.

Although we may be a bit behind, I'm confident that my group will be able to work together and get our presentation done!

Planning - Action

Today, my group and I had a 30-minute conference call on Skype to discuss our plans for our Group 4 project. The main question we were tried to answer was whether we want to focus on the theoretical or practical side of our topic (stretching). There are loads of experiments we could do as a group to test whether stretching improves physical performance that we could do, but we weren't sure if it is worth doing it when there is a lot of theoretical information on the topic.

If we do decide to base our project on experiments that we do, our main challenge will be figuring out a way to measure the impact of strength in the following areas of fitness: strength, flexibility, endurance, and agility. We brainstormed and came up with certain experiments we could do: sit and reach (flexibility), how high can one jump (strength), beep test (agility and endurance).

We decided to do some more research on our topic and meet in 3 days to make a final decision. We will be looking at how stretching affects 4 different areas of fitness. Each group member will be researching one area (I will be doing strength). We will also be investigating what kind of experiment we could do to test the impact. Some questions we also generated are:

- What does stretching do to your body?
- Why is it supposed to be important to warm up muscles before doing exercise?

By Thursday my group will have a plan on how to carry out the Action part of the Group 4 project.

Planning - Choosing a topic

Hi, my name is Adèle and I am a IB year 2 IB Biology Standard Level student at the International School of Kenya. This blog is devoted to following the progress myself and my group do while working on developing an experiment for this year's Group 4 Project. This year's theme is sport science. The other members of my group are Sarah, Eminet and Moses.

We first began discussing potential project ideas when we were assigned our groups. Sitting all in a circle, we had a quick brainstorming session where we threw ideas potential ideas. To further develop these, I set up a Facebook group with the 4 other members of my group. Here, I started posting links to articles related to sport science, to add more ideas to the mix. After a few days of mulling over possible experiments and activities we could look into, we made a list of all our ideas: 

• Anatomy
• Exercise Physiology
• Energy Systems
• Movement analysis
• Skill in sports
• Measurements and evaluations of human performance
• Nutrition for Sport and Health
• Optimizing Physiological Performance
• Psychology of Sport
• Physical activity and Health

After much discussing on Facebook, we trimmed the list down to our top three choices:• Does playing sports make you brain more effective and efficient 

• Movement analysis: Stretching and to what extent does it help 

• Energy Transfer through Balls



After much more discussing on Facebook, we agreed to choose the second choice: the impact of stretching on physical activity: "To what extent does stretching improve sporting performance?". We will be basing our experiments and hypotheses on the following websites:

http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/08/why-stretching-may-not-help-before-exercise/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22692125
https://ce.gssiweb.com/Article_Detail.aspx?articleID=736
http://jurchperformanceeducation.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Does-Stretching-Improve-Performance.pdf

Stretching is an action that many of us remember being stressed do to before, during and after we do sports. However, we found online that there is the possibility that stretching does not improve performance and may not need to be done at all. This is what we would like to prove in our project and research. Following our decision, we had another little brainstorming session on our Facebook group to discuss possible experiments we could do. I suggested that we could experiment by focusing on certain aspects of fitness: flexibility, strength, endurance. We could do certain exercises in each area of fitness, with one control who does stretching, and the variable group not stretching. This will test to see if stretching has a short term impact on physical performance. We will be focusing on Biology for this experiment. 

With this research and planning done, I thoroughly believe my group is ready to continue to the next section of the project: Action.