Writing an Effective Lab Report: Essential Sections and Guidelines for High School Students

This will help you practise the type of language to use, There are 3 main sections where your level of English and the clarity of your writing may affect your mark. These are the Background Information, Conclusion, and Evaluation. These sections are where you show you can think like a scientist and write your own thoughts and ideas in clear English, so focus on the other sections using the structures we give you first. You can get a pass mark by doing these sections well, then concentrate on the larger written passages to get the higher marks.

Why don’t I have to write much in a lab report? 

Scientists, and teachers, are just like most people — busy. They have a lot to do and don’t want to waste time reading unnecessary words. They want to read an experiment’s instructions so they know how to do it, or put ticks on your work so they can see you know how to do it. This is a good place to practice writing in clear English: in the materials and methods section, as they do not need to be in complete sentences. 

Each lab report follows the same pattern; the sections are always in the same order so your teacher knows what to look for next. And here’s the best bit: lab reports need the same stuff in each section every time! 

Spend some time thinking now about how to show your teacher what they want to see and you might free up 5 years of lab report writing time, because let’s face it, as you move through school you will have to do this every term at least. So if you can learn what goes in each section and why it goes in there, you can finish your lab report, get a great mark and have more free time to do something active or creative. 🙂

This is a basic overview, so read this first and if you’re thinking you need to measure or calculate more things, check out the specific blogs for GCSE/IGCSE, A-Level, IB MYP, IB DP.

Lab Report Headings 

So what goes in each section? Remember that each section is related, so sometimes there is a bit of repetition, but that’s what makes it easier to write and, remember, the more lab reports you do, the clearer your written English will become. 

Let’s have a look at an overview of a whole lab report before we see what goes in each section, and why:

As you will see below, each section will contain the same type of information for every lab report. Once you learn the structure you can write a lab report quickly and easily, and your teacher will be able to tick all of their boxes to give you top marks!

Why not start at the beginning? 

Scientists like to do things in the right order, right? However, starting your lab report at the beginning can be confusing, so let’s do the most important bit first, as all the other sections use bits of this section: the variables.

I know! They have terrible names that don’t help you understand the difference between them, but once you’ve used the tips below 3 times, you’ll have them fixed in your mind. So, can you remember what they are? The Independent, Dependent and Control:

Variables

This is where you can plan an experiment, or understand what the teacher has asked you to do. Easy English is needed here, as it uses the same structure every time and can be planned out using a table (see below).

Types of variables:

Independent: What you will CHANGE — with units!

Dependent: What you will MEASURE — with units!

Control Variables: What you will keep the SAME — and how!

To make the conclusion section easy (and make it a fair test) we only change one thing. So there is only ever one independent variable - let’s call it the IV.

To make it easy to do the experiment, we only normally measure one thing the IV affects, or changes. The thing we measure is called the dependent variable, or for us, the DV.

We need to keep lots of things the same, a minimum of 3 or 5 depending on what year you are in, to make it a fair test. The control variables is the only one in this section that is plural (has more than one). So we put an ‘s’ at the end and call it the CVs.

Copy and paste this box into your lab report, fill it in and keep it there whilst you are writing. Delete it after you have written each section using the information in it. Again, you don’t need to write a lot, just look at the example!

This is a great start, some thinking and not much writing, only about 20 words in simple English, but this table will help you with all the other sections. Are you glad you didn’t rush into the background research straight away? If you did, you can waste time researching the wrong things! 

Now we can start the other sections in the right order, click the button below to go to the next step, Writing the Report.

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