In Room 214 at Harbor City High School, the first assignment of the spring term looked less like homework and more like a field report: students opened a “lab notebook” template and, in plain language, drafted a study plan they would not actually run — at least not yet.

The exercise, part of a monthlong pilot in the school’s research literacy unit, is designed to make students slow down before leaping to conclusions, teacher Jonah Kline said.

“It’s not a science fair,” Kline told students, according to class materials shared with the Ledger. “It’s a habit: decide what you’re asking, decide what would prove you wrong, and decide how you’ll measure it.”

The pilot has spread to three classes — psychology, biology and statistics — and is being discussed by the district’s curriculum committee as a low-cost way to strengthen critical thinking without requiring lab equipment.

A notebook page, not a project

Students were asked to write their plan in a “lab notebook” style that favored dated entries, short bullets and quick checklists.

One student, sophomore Aisha Rios, chose a question drawn from her own routines: whether a phone’s “focus mode” would reduce late-night scrolling.

“I used to write, like, ‘I think it helps,’” Rios said. “This made me write what would count as not helping.”

Classmates picked similarly everyday topics: the effect of background music on reading speed, the impact of a short walk on mood after lunch, whether rewriting notes improves quiz performance.

Kline said the point was not the topic but the discipline of defining it.

“When students write ‘I’ll measure productivity,’ that’s where confusion starts,” he said. “Productivity has to become something you can count.”

The template students filled in

The page students used began with a single instruction: pick something small enough to test in a week, even if you never run the test. Then it broke the plan into blocks.

LAB NOTEBOOK ENTRY (Draft Study Plan)

1) Research question (one sentence):

• ☐ What, exactly, are you trying to find out?

2) Hypothesis (your best guess, stated plainly):

• ☐ “I think ___ because ___.”

3) Falsifiable prediction (what you would expect to observe):

• ☐ “If ___, then ___ will (increase/decrease) compared with ___.”

4) Variables checklist:

• ☐ Independent variable (IV): what you change on purpose
• ☐ Dependent variable (DV): what you measure
• ☐ Controls: what you keep the same so it’s a fair comparison

5) Operational measure (how you will measure the DV):

• ☐ Define a number, rating scale, or timed task
• ☐ Specify when, where and how often you measure

6) Two alternative explanations (what else could cause the result):

• ☐ Alternative explanation #1: ___
• ☐ Alternative explanation #2: ___

7) Interpretation prompt (to be answered at the end of your entry):

• ☐ If your result is null (no clear difference), what would it mean?
• ☐ What would you change next time — sample size, timing, measurement, or controls?

Kline circulated while students filled in the sections, pushing for specificity.

“If you say you’ll measure stress, what’s the scale?” he asked one group, according to a class recording. “One to five? Heart rate? A checklist? And when do you measure it — right after the task, or at the end of the day?”

Planning for being wrong

A central feature of the exercise is a line that some students said felt uncomfortable: write a prediction that could fail.

“It’s like you have to admit your idea might not work,” said junior Malik Chen, who drafted a plan about whether studying with short breaks improves recall. “But it also made the plan clearer.”

The template then asks for two alternative explanations — a requirement that, in practice, drove students to revisit their controls.

In one draft reviewed by the Ledger, a student predicted that drinking water before a quiz would improve scores. Under alternative explanations, she wrote that the improvement could come from sleeping better that day or from taking an easier quiz.

“That’s the moment they start building the guardrails,” Kline said. “They realize they need to keep the quiz comparable, or at least acknowledge what they can’t control.”

A small pilot with bigger ambitions

Assistant Principal Dana Whitmore said the pilot came out of teachers’ frustration with “answer-first” thinking.

“Students are used to having a correct response,” Whitmore said. “This asks them to write the plan that would tell them whether their response holds up.”

The district is considering adding the notebook page to ninth-grade advisory classes as well, Whitmore said, not as a graded research assignment but as a tool students can reuse.

“Even outside science, it translates,” she said. “In history, you can still define what would count as evidence. In athletics, you can define what you’re measuring and what you’re keeping constant.”

What students take home

By the end of the period, notebooks held plans with clear start and stop points — and, in some cases, a line for future self-critique.

Rios, the sophomore studying focus mode, wrote that a null result would not prove the setting “does nothing,” but could mean she measured the wrong thing or changed too many conditions at once.

“I wrote that I’d track screen time the same way every night, and if there’s no difference, I’d try a longer window or a different measure,” she said. “Like checking how many times I pick up my phone, not just total time.”

Kline said that kind of adjustment is the goal.

“A null result is not a fail,” he told the class, according to the lesson notes. “It’s a clue about your method, your measure, or your assumptions.”

For now, the notebook pages will stay in binders, untested. But Whitmore said she has already heard a different kind of hallway talk.

“Students are arguing about controls,” she said. “That’s new.”

Final entry prompt

Before leaving, students were asked to add one more paragraph to their notebook entry — not about what they believe, but about what they would do if the data did not cooperate:

• Explain how you would interpret a null result in your study plan.
• State what you would change next time — and why.