In each of your 3 years of CAT, you will complete a Practical Assessment Task — or PAT. When you first receive your copy of the Learner Guide — a 30-plus page document — your heart might sink a little. “How will I ever complete this thing?” you might think (I know it’s what I was thinking while driving back from my first PAT training session as a teacher). This is the first in a series of posts aimed at helping you excel at this task!
Please remember the requirements around the data collected changed in 2021 for the Grade 12 PAT. The requirements are more specific, especially regarding the “extra data from a source other than your questionnaire” of previous years. You will be expected to collect data from a separate source and compare the information derived from your questionnaire to this extra data source — this will require a bit of extra planning to ensure that you can find “external” data to match your questionnaire data.
In this post:
Your “Project Manager”
Your CAT teacher is your Project Manager, or PM. The PM’s task is to ensure you understand what is required of you, keep you on track, and guide and assist you where necessary. Your PM should be constantly evaluating your progress and giving you constructive feedback.
Show off!
This is your opportunity to show all the skills you have acquired during your CAT studies. There are even marks for showing skills you have picked up that are not covered by the curriculum. The minimum requirements are exactly that: the least amount of work you need to do to fulfil the PAT requirements. Minimum requirements = minimum marks!
The list below is aimed at highlighting the path to success with your PAT:
- Read your Learner Guide carefully
- Create a concise Focus Question
- Write a power Task Definition based on your Focus Question
- Always make sure that the work you are doing now will allow you to fulfil the later requirements of the PAT
The Learner Guide
You will receive a copy of the Learner Guide. It details every single step and requirement and provides examples for you to follow. It is your PAT “Bible”. It also includes a copy of the assessment tool. Read it carefully. Then read it again!
Self-marking
Do you think you have completed a section? Take the assessment tool and mark yourself! Not sure you ticked a box? Ask your PM for guidance! 100%: here I come!
Steps to success
Below is a list of links to additional posts dealing with specific sections of the PAT:
2021 of all years was the year that using a Google Form for your questionnaire became the smart option!
- Phase 1
- Folder structure
- Report outline
- Learner Declaration of Authenticity
- Brainstorming the 2022 topic
- Report cover page
- Focus Question
- Task Definition
- Research questions
- Capturing full source details for your PAT
- Creating your sources
- Creating your bibliography
- Evaluating research sources for your PAT
- Summarising your sources
- Phase 1 Report finishing touches
- Phase 2
- Questionnaire
- Google Form Questionnaire
- Excel data capture
- Additional dataset (Grade 12 only)
- Excel analysis
- Excel Charts
- Access Database (Grades 11 & 12 only)
- Phase 2 report
- Phase 3
- Final report
- PowerPoint presentation (Grade 10)
- HTML Website (Grades 11 & 12)
Extras
As mentioned before, you can demonstrate skills that fall outside of the CAT curriculum:
- Add some Lorem Ipsum dummy text to your Phase 1 Word report
- Be creative with your images using GIMP or other image editing software
- Use URL shortening to modify your website URLs in your research questions table (keep the original URLs and create an additional column for the shortened URLs)
- Use the amazing Google Forms to create a digital online questionnaire
- Go the extra mile with your Access database and add a showy “splash screen”
- Impress with some additional HTML tags and techniques:
- Use some CSS to add some panache to your website, like a simple CSS menu (remember to demonstrate the standard HTML skills as well to “tick all the boxes” on the mark sheet)
Next step: PAT Phase 1: Plan & Research »