Curriculum Development in the Cairns Diocese

Style Guide for Student Reporting

18 March 2009

Catholic Education Services Diocese of Cairns 1 STYLE GUIDE

Reports are official school documents, bearing the school’s logo and written for the parents. As such, they must be of the highest quality, recognisable and readable by the school’s community.

Schools wishing to develop their own style rules could consider the following:

SENTENCE STRUCTURE

Avoid the use of ‘however’ when using it as a conjunction about two unrelated aspects, e.g. ‘Matthew is able to write a simple and descriptive narrative, however he needs to revise his spelling words’. These are two unrelated points and the second negates the celebration of the first point. In this case split the sentence in two, e.g. Matthew is able to write simple, descriptive narratives. He is still learning to spell some common words’. ‘However’ is best used in adding to a point, especially moving from a negative to a positive, e.g. ‘Matthew is still learning strategies to solve simple multiplication problems, however he has begun to recall his five and ten times tables’.

Avoid the use of ‘would’, ‘will’ and ‘should’ in reference to suggestions for the future, e.g. ‘Revision of sight words will assist her reading to develop.’ Although we know it would assist, we cannot guarantee that this will happen and so we need to use “could” or “may” instead.

SPELLING

Commonly misspelt words include:

 practice (noun) and practise (verb) - Use “practice” if the word is a noun e.g. ‘the practice’, ‘a practice’, etc. If it is used as a verb e.g. ‘we practised’, ‘when practising’ then it is spelt with an “s”. Unless you are confident in using these words it may be better to use the words ‘revise’ or ‘revision’.

 effect (noun) and affect (verb) - “Affect” is the verb e.g. ‘this affects his writing’. “Effect “is the noun e.g. ‘the effect of this is’.

 commitment

 definitely;

 initiate,

 initiative;

 trial, trialling, trialled;

 target, targeting, targeted;

 focus, focusing, focused.

Catholic Education Services Diocese of Cairns 2 GRAMMAR

 Subject/verb agreement: This occurs when the writer selects the correct verb for the noun or noun group to which it is referring. e.g. Reading and writing are important (as opposed to Reading and writing is important) or He writes stories and they write stories. noun/pronoun reference.

 There is no hard and fast rule for how many times you should use a pronoun before you repeat the child’s name. It is recommended that you use a pronoun no more than three times before using the child’s name again. Eg. Jai can count to 70 and order, read and write numbers up to 30. He needs to continue working on his addition facts. He still requires practice in solving number problems. Jai can make halves but still needs help when working with quarters

 Tense: Ensure that the same tense has been used throughout the comments for each KLA.

 Redundancies: Try to avoid redundancies e.g. a class group, final completion, a number of examples.

PUNCTUATION

Use punctuation for pause and effect and to make the statement clear:

 Capital letters at the beginning of sentences, proper nouns. (N.B. Schools should decide whether they want to capitalise the key learning areas. English needs to be, but other KLAs may have lower case e.g. mathematics, creative arts.)

 Full stops at the end of sentences;

 Commas should be used between clauses that have different subjects and are linked by conjunctions such as but, for, nor e.g. Juan can count to 50 by ones, but needs to practise counting by twos.

 Hyphens. Do not hyphenate cooperate, cooperative, coordinate.

 Capital letters are used for the following:

o ‘Mathematics’ as a KLA name and not ‘Mathematical’

o Strand names e.g. …achievement in the area of Number…

o names of classes, e.g. Five Brown

o the words Mass and Masses

 Capital letters are not used for the words ‘class’ or ‘parish’ unless the word ‘parish’ is used in the name of the parish, e.g. at St Anthony’s Parish.

 Apostrophes are to be used for possession, e.g. the student’s work, St Anthony’s (school)

Catholic Education Services Diocese of Cairns 3  Do not shorten words with the use of apostrophes. This is a formal document and shortening words (contractions) are not appropriate, e.g. it’s, he’s etc.

 There is no apostrophe in “KLAs”. If in doubt, leave the apostrophe out.

 Numbers are written in text seven and not with numerals 7.

Adapted from NSW and Victorian Education Department material on Assessment and Reporting

Catholic Education Services Diocese of Cairns 4