One of the pivotal document that records the growth of a learner in their journey of education is a “year end or term end” report card.
I would even say this document is as important as a first year growth chart of the new born. The journey of the student in acquiring the knowledge, applying it and exhibiting the expertise all of these needs to be carefully and cautiously recorded by the teacher.
Nevertheless to say a report card is a hard copy of the imprint that a learner had created in the past. This is how as a teacher, I look at it. Just as how thumbprints do not match, every student’s report card must be ‘unique’.
No matter how many ever children we have in our class, preparing a report card needs investment of teacher’s time supported with professional outlook while presenting the same.
A teacher has to take up the responsibility of highlighting “scope for improvement areas” at the same time should not hesitate to mention, ‘the student always like to do chart work to decorate the class during the school project day’. Many a times, the former comment takes precedence the latter comment is conveyed as a complaint or short coming of the student.
I personally feel a report card should be as colorful as their world, with a picture of the possessor and highlighting their social skills apart from academic milestones.
A report card reflects the culture of the school too. If the school believes in holistic growth of a child then parameters such as emotional intelligence take priority over academic intelligence. Even though many schools have moved forward in recent past by giving importance to grade social skills of a child, it is yet to capture the moments that showcases the growth mindset of the child. Teachers might, for example, intentionally praise student effort and perseverance instead of ascribing learning achievements to innate qualities or talents—e.g., giving feedback such as “You must have worked very hard,” rather than “You are so smart.”(Source: http://edglossary.org)
How nice it would be to showcase the potential of the child, just not use mere positive adjectives as starters of sentences. But, explain it with child’s his/her own words quoting instances .This way the student also is made accountable for his/her personal growth.
From a parent perspective, a report card should not be the first instance when a parent gets to know of any thing about their child. Things that are recorded /displayed in there should have enough back up moments prior to the report card.As teachers we can be pioneers by customizing it according to the age group as well.
Recently, I saw in of the school report card a space for the student to write his/her dream.This was the most attractive part in that report card that caught my attention. A parent gets to know right from middle school years( even primary year of school) how the child plans. Quite possible that their goal will keep changing year on year (may be not), still it gets captured in words.
To get these most basic, yet vital information about the student a log book can be maintained for each one of them. A student should be encouraged to fill in the data such as hobbies, best moments in last term, skill that the student had mastered or learnt, any new sport learnt etc. There is a good share for the students themselves in creating their report card. The skill they learnt could be even “making friends this term-How good are you at that?”
Imagine a parent gets to read all these at the end of year 🙂 It’s a complete summation of their child and your student at one shot ,in one year span. Even if there were any area of concern, parent and the student might take it in positive stride and will work towards it.
The report card should not merely be a formal document with printed material packed with information rather it should be mixed with emotions and incidents that brings the life of the student in front of the parents’ eyes.
To summarize, a report card should have:
- Health information ( eyesight/height/weight)
- Emotional aspects /social concerns effecting performance
- Behavior as individual as well as in group
- Work habit as independent person as well as in group
- Level of support currently being provided to the student( if needed)
- Future plans that might assist the student to help improve in concerned area(s) (curricular and co-curricular)
- Solutions to parents to facilitate that improvement from home front whether it be academic concern or behavior concern
- Space provided exclusive for their strengths, achievements, dreams, goals/ambitions/ hobbies and interest. The data for this must be provided by the students themselves. These are different from the specialist sessions like arts or music.
- The report card structure must align with the schools motto and vision.
- If the institution believes in creating an empathetic human besides an individual achiever then those parameters should take the prime space in the report card.
It’s definitely worth the time to plan a report card because we never know when the student will take a look at it later. When a student reads his/her kindergarten report later at the age of seven, they will possibly try to compare how far they have traveled. They might also feel proud reading ‘what kind of a person they were at the age of five’ and how the teacher then had adored them for being like that.
Things that can be avoided in a report card:
- General comments like “work hard to score more”
- Cut and paste similar comments by grouping them as average, below average and above average performers.
- Spell/grammar errors
- Concerns that were never told to parents earlier but gets printed on the report card for the first time( academic issues or behavior issues)
- Incorrect grades ( grades to be supported with data)
To help with some positive way of writing report comments, kindly look this link given below.I have sourced it from scholastic and felt it would be very useful for us as teachers.
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/top-teaching/2012/11/101-report-card-comments-use-now
We all are aware, we are the sculptors of young minds. We play a major and inevitable role in constructing their future too. Begin with a positiveness.
The Teacher Connections 