Putting the report together

We started today by thinking about reports in general.

Four groups designed posters that came up with ideas to my question, "what makes a report a report?"

We had some good ideas on this - some points focused on the various sections which we would expect to find in a report. Other ideas mentioned the style of a report - how it was written and how it looked (the layout). Some points were also made about the purpose and readership of reports. Great work on that - well done!

I then asked the groups to come up with headings for the report that forms part of the assessment for this unit. Between you all, you came up with a good structure. While you had a break, I tweaked it a bit, so that we ended up with this as the structure for the report:

Title page

Contents page

1 Introduction (the purpose of your report will be made clear here)

2 Research methods (what did you do to research the report - ie internet research, consultation of course text, research meeting)

3 Findings

3.1 Overview of event (this should come from what you had to do for Caroline's report)

3.2 Social impact (this should come from what you had to do for Caroline's report)

3.3 Economic impact (this should come from what you had to do for Caroline's report)

3.4 Political impact (this should come from what you had to do for Caroline's report)

4. Conclusion (In general terms, or in summary form, what are the social, economic and political impacts of your chosen event - write a sentence on each)

5. References (detail of specific sources you used to research the event - ie. website address and when you accessed it.)

6. Appendices (copy of agenda and minutes for research meeting)


Everyone typed this structure up and saved it as the starting point for the report for this class.

We finished with an exercise on formal writing style. The point of this exercise was to get you to practise more formal writing as is required for report writing.

Here are some links on report writing and formal writing that you may find useful:


http://www2.napier.ac.uk/gus/writing_presenting/reports.html#style

http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/words/writing/


Next week, it's just a matter of putting the information that you have into the report structure which we devised today.