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Dr Nicola Ward Petty
Statistics Learning Centre n.petty@statsLC.com
2013
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 Report writing
 Issues
 Strategies
 Statistics Learning Centre resources
 Questions
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1.
How long have you been teaching mathematics?
2.
How long have you been teaching statistics?
3.
How confident do you feel teaching trigonometry?
Very confident Confident Not confident Very unconfident
4.
How confident do you feel teaching statistical report-writing?
Very confident Confident Not confident Very unconfident
5.
How do you feel about the new curriculum?
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Discuss with your neighbour.
(Don’t all start at number 1)
1.
Why is it important for students to be able to write good statistical reports?
2.
How well are your students doing at writing reports?
Why might they not be doing as well as you would like them to?
3.
What are you doing to help them develop their report-writing skills?
4.
Why is it difficult for mathematics teachers to teach reportwriting?
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Why is it important for students to be able to write good statistical reports?
• You don’t realise whether you understand or not until you try to write it down. The process is important.
• Better critics of other reports
• Part of the literacy initiative
• Useful skill for employment – report writing, and literacy generally
• Required for marking!
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2.How well are your students doing at writing reports?
Why are they not doing as well as you would like them to?
 Writing too much – brain spill – 65 pages!

Repeating themselves
 Not sure what is relevant so put everything in…
 But leave out important aspects
 Non-sentences
 Poorly structured
 Not enough linkage to the context …or…
 Too much context and not enough analysis
 Some are great – generally from social-science students
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3.What are you doing to help them develop their report-writing skills?
 Guidelines
 Feedback
 Practice


Homework
In class
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4.Why is it difficult for mathematics teachers to teach report-writing?
 Not used to teaching or assessing written English
 May feel uncomfortable and lacking in skills
 Few resources available to help
 May be unconvinced of the necessity of the task
 The students themselves are not happy with writing.
 Not sure of what is needed by moderators.
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Time series output from iNZight.
 Monthly retail sales in $m in the USA of different categories.
 Raw data.
 From http://www.economagic.com/cenret.htm
Your task
 Find something interesting in the graphs.
 Write down three sentences of five words or fewer.
 Share your sentences with your neighbour(s).
 Choose your best and worst sentences and write in big letters on paper to show the class.
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Short idea sentence to complete detailed sentence:
Books peak in August.
This is a good idea sentence!
Books = the retail sales of books in the USA
Peak in August = are greater in August than in any other month.
Convert to a sentence:
The retail sales of books in the USA are greater in August than in any other month of the year.
Quantify: On average the sales in August are approximately twice what they are in other months except for December and January.
Hypothesise: This is probably because August is the beginning of the school year in the USA, and people are buying textbooks.
Possibly even some background investigation!
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 The report should not be the first thing they write
 Small exercises for homework, peer review
 good feedback is necessary – descriptive rather than evaluative.
 Checklists so they can see if the ideas are communicated well.
 Warm-up sentences at the start of class
 Write ALL the time while doing the analysis – clarifies thinking
 “Fill in the gaps” activities give structure
 Make your own from a report. Remove words. (Cloze exercise)
 On-line activities (NZStats 3 from Statistics Learning Centre)
 Give examples and formats – writing guides
 Page or time limits in assessments (self-defence for teachers)
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Teach principles as well as guiding assignment
All four internal standards:
 Time Series – Like a business report
 Bivariate – Scientific
 Inference – Includes explaining the ideas of bootstrapping and confidence intervals
 Experimental Design – Description of the whole process so that it could be replicated
Feel free to copy and use our writing guides, but leave the branding on them.
Told they need more “research” to suit moderators.
There are exercises to go with them on the
StatsLC.com site.
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 Immediate Feedback
 Easy access – any device
 Up-to-date and responsive
 Engaging – will have “badges” soon
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Homework
 Teachers assign a certain activity or quiz for homework.
 Students can show their completion by printing out the results.
Classroom enrichment
 Use the activities in class time to complement other work.
 “flipped” classroom
Review
 The exercises in NZ Stats 3 can be used repeatedly.
 Large database so students get a different test each time.
 Students can also track their own progress.
 Good for Scholarship as includes all standards.
Help with assignments
NZ Stats 3 provides guidelines and practice in report-writing
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