You can do a huge amount of work in your PAT Phase 1 report before you even have your Topic: the format of the PAT remains almost 100% consistent from year-to-year! Grade 11’s and 12’s should already be familiar with much of the process, Grade 10’s: some of the instructions may seem a bit odd until you see your final PAT and understand that it is all part of the process!
Language
Set the proofing language of your Word Document to English (United Kingdom).
Styles
Start setting up your styles before you begin adding content to your document — you can always update them later. You must use at least 3 styles: Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3, and of course, you will also automatically be using the Normal style.
- Normal style should be font size 12. Be sure to use a straightforward, easy-to-read font like Arial, Calibri, etc. Set your line and paragraph spacing appropriately.
- Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3 should use the same font style and colour as each other, will be larger in size than the Normal style, and a different font and colour to Normal style. You can use a slightly more stylish font, such as Garamond, but do not use any of the more outlandish fonts, like Algerian, Broadway or any of the cursive fonts which are hard to read and do not suitable in a professional context.
- Use different font sizes, with Heading 1 being the largest and Heading 3 the smallest.
- Set the before and after paragraph spacing for your heading styles.
Cover page
For now, simply add your name and surname, the name of the subject, and the full name of your school to the first page which will become your Cover Page. Do not use abbreviations and capitalize as necessary.
Minimum headings
Each year, with very little change, the following pages and headings will be necessary — go ahead and create them (remember to use Styles to format them: the 1st level numbered headings should be Heading 1 & the 2nd level numbered items should be Heading 2). Each heading should be on a new page. Your Appendices must be in a separate Section so you can insert a Section Page Break after your Bibliography rather than the usual Page Break.
Page numbering
You should set your page numbering up as well — pop over to the post dealing specifically with automatic Page Numbering in Word for all the details.
- (Cover page)
- (Table of Contents)
- Table of Figures
- Focus Question
- Task Definition
- Introduction
- Discussion
- Analysis
- Findings
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Appendices
- Addendum A: Research Questions (with table)
- Addendum B: Summaries (10 level 3 headings, linked to questions in Research Questions table)
- Addendum C: Source details (with 3 tables)
- Addendum D: Evaluation of Sources (with 3 tables)
- Addendum E: Learner Declaration of Authenticity (with details completed)
- Addendum F: Folder structure screenshot
Table of Contents
Even before you have your topic or any content you can have a document with an automatic Table of Contents similar to the one pictured below (remember: the Table of Contents feature relies on the correct use of Styles):

Top Tip: Keep checking back with your Table of Contents — update the field and check that the Styles have been applied correctly and that the page numbering is correct.
The Grade 10 Learner Guide for 2020 specifies that you create your Table of Contents manually using tabs with leader lines. If you use the automatic Table Of Contents instead, you must ensure that you demonstrate the skill of creating tabs with leader lines elsewhere to fulfil the PAT requirement.
Research Questions table
Add your Research Questions table, Source details tables, Source evaluation tables and Learner Declaration to your outline as well.
NO | QUESTION | CATEGORY | QUESTION LEVEL | TYPE OF SOURCE | BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION | SUMMARY |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | ||||||
… | ||||||
10 |
Source details tables
You must provide the full details of 3 of the sources. 2 of those sources must be websites, the 3rd must be a source other than a website. Create tables for these details in Addendum C: Source details.
You will need 2 tables like this one:
SOURCE DETAILS FOR QUESTION 1 (WEBSITE) | |
---|---|
Author | |
Website name | |
Webpage name | |
Date published | |
Date Accessed | |
URL |
And a third table similar to (the headings will vary depending on what type of source you choose later) this one:
SOURCE DETAILS FOR QUESTION 3 (BOOK) | |
---|---|
Author | |
Title | |
Year published | |
City published | |
Publisher |
Table captions
All of your table must have captions. You can add them now.
Table styling
Style your tables so that they look the same, remember: consistency, consistency, consistency!
Table of Figures
Once you have started adding captions to your tables, you can add a Table of Figures beneath the appropriate heading.
Once you have your Learner Guide your next step will be to complete your Cover Page.
Hi David
This is beautiful!
I have started something similar by creating a slide deck which shows a few examples of what each part of phase 1 needs to look like. I include screenshots from the PAT document.
Do you also find that learners don’t really want to read through that guideline document?
* the link to “Cover Page” takes one to the task description. (not sure if that’s intentional).
Hi David, I love what you did here. I just wish it was also available in Afrikaans to help my students better. We are on the same whatsapp group with Adam and was also together in a workshop. It is actually my first year(since last March) that I teach CAT and this year I have the matrics also. I love teaching CAT. If you have some brilliant ideas would you please share them with me. I have gr 10- 12. Thank you
Thanks, Carlene!
I have loads of PowerPoint presentations that I use in class. I am trying to put all of that information online so that my Learners can access it when they are not in class (Grade 10 and 11’s are on rotation).
I am also working on converting Matric papers into self-marking Google Form Quizzes for Learners to use as preparation.
I am using Google Classroom extensively to create checkpoints for PAT progress – that way I can check progress at this time when we are not able to go to a Learners desk to see their work.
Please give me any feedback and keep an eye out for new posts. I only teach CAT in English so I am afraid translations are a way off…