I should be writing report card comments. I should be correcting, marking, assessing, evaluating, judging (I don’t even know the verb anymore) summative assessments, but to be honest, those teacherly duties kicked my butt today, and I need a break to re-charge, re-evaluate what it is I do and why I do it.
Report Card Comments- Feel a bit outdated? No? Here we are talking about student empowerment, 21st century learning, constructivist pedagogy, student centered inquiry based learning, enhanced with the power of collaborative technologies, but we still spend countless hours and energy at the end of every term dictating our profound wisdom and expertise about who students are, what and how they learn in 500 words or less. Seems to me that end-of-term report card comments are a carry-over from a dying era. Relics of a time when the teacher was the all-knowing power tripping ego holding all the cards.
I am bitter. Maybe I don’t know how to write comments. Maybe I don’t know who they are for or what purpose they are meant to serve. Maybe I am writing this post so you can help me. Just seems to me that very little can be accomplished by a few lines at the end of a term that could possibly give anyone any indication of the magic that happens in a classroom on a daily basis. Even as a parent, I am seldom enlightened to anything new through report card comments. I can read the angst and pain through every line. What is it I want? I want to know what Kaia does every day. I want to know what makes her happy. What excites her? What kinds of questions does she ask? How I can expand her learning at home? Can I write reports like that for grade 10 MYP students? Do I know them well enough? Do I know what excites them? All I do is say that they are strong writers who may need some help with basic grammatical structures. Perhaps they should speak up more in class! What parents doesn’t know this about their kid? Are these comments useful to anyone? Why do we write them then?
Okay, enough whining! What is my solution? I would rather give snippets of comments throughout the year, share rubrics with parents as units are completed, give non-critical feedback on blog posts, and critical feedback on shared rubrics through google-docs. I would rather have students assess themselves and write their own reports. (Something I have actually done this year. I have had all my students write their own reports in the third person, and I am simply looking them over and checking for agreement of what they say. They are more often too hard on themselves.) I want to share videos about what we do in class and produce content that is public and shareable for parents to see for themselves. I want to Tweet out updates of inquiry in class and have parents interact with their kids and our content while we are learning, not after it is done. Is this too idealistic? Do parents want to be this involved? Can they be? Do I have the time to do all of this? I am lost.
Honestly, I don’t have a solution. That is why I am writing tonight. What do you do? How do you make reports meaningful for parents, students, for yourself? How can we bring reporting to the 21st century? Does it still play a role in education? I suppose this is a larger question having to do with assessment. All I know is that I feel very deflated today. I know my kids have done some amazing things this term, and also I know we have stumbled and come up short. I am certain we have learned a lot, but somewhere in the maze of assessment criteria, grades, reporting, comments, feedback it has all become a murky mess. If I cannot point to a rubric, leave a comment on a report card to prove what kids have learned, have they learned anything?
Back to marking some assessments and report card comments…
Since my students do so much work on their blogs, I think that those authentic documents really show what they are doing (I don’t for a minute think it shows what they are learning). I also know that very few parents actually bother to look at those posts…. Ultimately, I see that the real learning conversations need to take place with the students. The parents need to have opportunities to be informed, but it isn’t their learning. Do you write anything on the report cards that you don’t discuss with your students first?
You have so much excitement for learning and you impart that to those around you. We do our best to give parents the opportunity to celebrate along with us. Sometimes they do, but often they are very caught up in their own daily issues. Over the years, I haven’t had one parent who hasn’t been grateful and joyous when we do manage to point out great student learning in student-led conferences and special events. (We had a very successful parent sharing event last Friday in 5MJ) However, reports…yup…we do them and we try to make them specific and interesting. Mostly, I am only moderately successful. I get hung up on outcomes and skills. This year, I managed to put in quite a bit about inquiry and collaboration. Maybe too dry, but I do try!
Hi Jabiz. I wish I had a black and white response to such an important and complicated question, but I don’t. Not right now, anyway. Maybe it’s because it (meaning assessment) is such a gray and complex animal. I do agree with you though that it shouldn’t be an end of term tweet-longer update or a 7- minute monologue during PTCs. It’s my hope as well that “reporting” moves away from that model so that relationships not well-written narratives are developed at the end of the day. In a parallel universe, it would be awesome to have a healthy conversation on going with parents, teachers and kids, where the discourse on teaching and learning is dynamic, and everyone is involved. And where there’s a way to document it all. I think there’s a path that’s being cleared towards this way of thinking, learning, teaching, doing and assessing but there are still too many forks on the road where the dirt is fresh, the soil soft and each step makes some of us dig our heels deeper into the earth. I believe we are ready for the long haul but right now, right this minute, I believe it’s okay for you to call it a day. #workaholicwisdom
In the meantime, what I do to cope (during my own report card season) is to celebrate small mercies, no matter how problematic they may be in some respects. (e.g. descriptors vs. weighted average; self/peer/teacher assessment vs. an A,B,C,D or an F-, criterion related assessment vs. the way we were tested just for facts in a test). I believe we have come a long way no matter how much longer we have to go.
Now I get the tweets-Internet can be incredibly slow in China. I agree with Ms. P about the parallel universe and with you that comments are archaic. For me, they are a disservice to all parties involved. Like you said, there should be conversation going on all year with everyone at the table. I wish I had a magic solution as well, but just do the best you can and like I said in my tweet-those students are so lucky to have you. Maybe we should start a new movement called Comments Are For Suckers… Think it will catch on?
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I hope these types of comments are on their way out. Even 10+ years ago when I was in high school, the comments had been downgraded to ones chosen from a pre-generated list and entered into our electronic reports. Did I find any of them even remotely useful? No. I doubt my parents would have either. (I did find humour in one comment on an old report card of my mother’s, but that had nothing to do with actual useful feedback on her learning.) I learned significantly more from the day-to-day environment and conversations as well as other evaluation tools. These types of comments also do not prepare students or parents for the type of feedback they will receive in a higher education environment or even the sort of assessment that happens in the workplace.
Would it be too strange to base the comment on a quotation from their self-evaluation?
I am actually using what they wrote verbatim and adding or subtracting certain things and editing for grammar. Guess, the issue for me is that even what I asked them to reflect on was all skills based and achievement oriented. Even the language of strengths and weakness was all wrong. I want a new way of looking at assessment and reports. Will expand more in other comments.
You and I are in very same places. I know what I WANT to do with my kids, but do I actually ever do it? Very seldom.
Sometimes I try to blame the culture of schooling that I’m in, but that isn’t the only barrier. I’m trying to remove myself and I’m trying to push collaboration as much as I can. I want to talk to parents and kids openly about their day to day learning. But, until it becomes a priority and a habit, it isn’t going to magically happen.
You’re right…there isn’t any single answer. But, I’m trying to stay away from the big pictures and fight for little baby-step victories as often as I can. Eventually, those mini-victories will begin to snowball into meaningful change.
I am working on my own comments, and I share your concerns and frustrations. I’m an English teacher: of course I can write a carefully crafted, informative narrative summing up a student’s progress during the term. I often feel that I am writing this narrative to parents simply to justify the grade I am giving, and since I find that grades are a poor indicator of what is really going on in my classroom (the daily “aha” moments, the witty, intelligent, compassionate, or hilarious things students say, the cool left-field questions that end up stoking our fires and inspiring us to really dig in), I get bummed when I spend a lot of comment writing time on aspects of my class that aren’t all that interesting. I do my best to spice things up with anecdotes and quotes from students’ writing, but for the most part I am reporting on skills. Progress in writing, grammar, vocabulary, and literature is important as is growth in self-advocacy, organization, and timeliness. It’s helpful for parents to know about this. However, like you and others who have posted, I am looking for a shift in what parents want to know. I’d love more dialogue, and you offer some great means to do so using tech, but like you I wonder how involved parents really can be, given the busy lives today’s families lead. The bottom line is that I want parents to know that I am invested in their child’s education, that I know their child is a unique person and learner and that I am doing and will continue to do all that I can to support and nurture them.
Thanks for all your great comments. There is a lot to think about. After reading Jen’s comment I got to thinking, what if kids kept a video journal of a unit or a term, a digital story of their learning. They can include text comments as well, but some kind of student created portfolio which highlights their experience of a unit. The teacher can add insight throughout the term in the student created digital.
I have lots of reports to write. This time around I will stick to what I know, but thinking of ways to do it differently next term.
Good morning Jabiz, because I am at home without a voice I have a lot of time to read all the comments that your report angst has sparked. I’ll confine my comments to your last entry. Our 5MJ blogs are definitely turning into a digital journey of the great stuff that they are doing since their field trip to the landfill community. They regularly (although we could do more) post reflections and actions using photos and videos. We have even managed some just-on-time maths inquiries about making circles and measuring for scale models. Now, to get the parents more inspired to visit the class blog and the student blogs. The class blog is open but the student’s blogs require special instructions to get to a page where they can use a password for access. It’s not straight-forward and I doubt that any of our parents actually do it. Maybe sometimes they look over the shoulders of their child when they are working on their blog from home. Nevertheless, good steps towards sharing our learning excitement.
That is great, and I think you are on the right track, but….you still have to write traditional reports right? When will that change? When will the expectation to write comments as a school fade away? That is my issue.
When you speak of traditional reports, I was just at some PD that included why technology is important in the classroom… I understand why the presenter had to go this route as many teachers are still not on board with technology, but really? We are still there? So until I see a shift with that aspect, I am afraid anything other than the traditional reports cards is here for the foreseeable future. We just have to be trailblazers – one step at a time I guess.
I don’t think reports will ever leave us. But they are just one part of the whole. And increasingly, they are the dry and not-quite-relevant part. I haven’t noticed a lot of interest from parents when they get the reports sent to them. In fact, I get more of a feeling that they look at them and just file them away. But they are the only document that they get to keep forever. We’ve been through the wilderness of totally “teacher-speak” reporting and I think we are coming through it. I try to make comments that will truly indicate their reading, writing and communicating skills and give examples. I talk about how they handle problem solving in maths and what skills they still need to develop. In UOI ( Units of Inquiry) I talk about how they inquire and whether they work well in groups. Whether they are self-motivated. What they are including on their blogs. If they are writing them mindful of an audience. In Student Life I talk about their social interactions, and whether they involve themselves in a range of activities in and out of the classroom. It’s not so bad. It’s a record to keep.
But I love the 3 Way and the Student-Led Conferences because the students really get to have a dialogue with their parents about their learning.
I’ve just been through the agony of reports (which is why I have time to respond to this) and these are my thoughts..
I try not to waste my time with anything that doesn’t benefit my students in someway.And I try not to waste my time with anything that is tedious and boring. Reports, at times, can seem pointless and tedious. Why am I repeating myself in a little box if a parent can just see their kids’ blog or read comments on their papers? Why is this taking all my time and energy.Why can’t I have a life? Or a conversation that isn’t about reports?
I decided this time, as best as possible, I would use reports to show parents I know their kids. This is a way to justify my marks (which seemed secondary in this whole process, thank goodness). But in showing I know their kids, I hope I am building trust with the parents when I want to do something out of the ordinary. They know I know their kids. And it also gave me an opportunity to think about those kids I don’ t know so well and make it a goal to learn more about them. In a way, it was a formative assessment for me as a teacher.That was how I justified all the time, energy, tears and headaches. It made it more bearable.
Good luck. And you can borrow my mantra that I repeated ad infinitum the past two weeks, “it will all get done.”
So I am now wading through the reports that all of my colleagues have written, making sure that everyone has crossed the t, dotted the I’s and of course having the conversations about what the correct grammar is for every situation. Could I be spending my time doing something better, to sum up yes and that is to use that time to look at students in their learning environments. In my position I would hope that by reading the reports I would get a feel for each and every child but sadly that is not the case, BUT if I flick to their personal blogs suddenly the student becomes real, I can see what they are engaged in, what they are not, how they are thinking and what is important to them. I can also see how the teacher is reflecting on the learning of that child. The numbers on a report are simply that and are a gauge for us to see where the kids are at that point in time – with a good grade book programme I think as a parent I should be able to access it anytime I want or have the time. Is their value in the comments that I read for my students and for my own daughter – well I am not sure. I cant help but feel that so much time is wasted on coming up with comments and report banks that really give me little idea of the individual student. I also find it hard to see how report comment banks fits with the philosophy of holistic education.
I would love to see a revolution where we look at this completely differently and that we can come up with a system that effectively gives each party what they want. It will mean quite a shift, but it will be nice to not have everyone sweating at this time of year trying to hit that deadline.
So, Jabiz, why don’t you capitalize on your experience of parenthood and put that into your comments? What I mean is, for each kid you have to write a comment for, ask yourself, “If I was this kid’s father, what would I want to know about how s/he’s doing in English?”
I will (unsurprisingly) be the voice of dissent on this thread. I actually enjoy writing comments on reports. If anything, I’d rather get rid of all the grades (or replace them with symbols) and write MORE comments. I write every comment genuinely, and something tells me you do, too. Can the IB learner profile help you? Can you comment on how a student is a good thinker, or needs to be more of a risk-taker? Or what about Approaches to Learning? I often feel that if grades have to be on the report (specifically subject criteria), it’s my role to comment mostly on Approaches to Learning, because the criteria should explain the skill levels. Does the child come to class prepared? Is he always losing stuff? Is she really great at teamwork? How well does she work independently vs in a group? And I find that my comments on AtL skills usually end up being an explanation for the grade in the first place — not sure if that makes sense but I’m happy to explain in more detail.
Good luck — I do think these comments are valuable. I’m not a parent, but I know my own parents (both teachers for a time) cared far more about teachers’ comments than about my grades!
Oh, it’s reports time!
Suddenly I find myself finding time to clean the bathroom, mop the floor, organize my closet, pluck my eyebrows, paint my fingernails, take a nap, make a coffee, and maybe do some baking as well. I am finding new techniques to procrastinate this job… which goes without saying, I really dislike writing reports.
The most challenging part of writing reports is finding new ways to use words. It’s a lot of fluff…pretty words that we eloquently line up to inform parents of student progress, or the lack thereof. We have to be so careful and report with such professional language I think it gets lost in translation to parents who read them. I might write, ‘ Johnny needs to work on his communication skills’, but really what I want to say is, ‘your child is a mute and wont speak, even when personally addressed.’
Okay okay, maybe I don’t really want to use the word mute, because it is so harsh… but what if it’s the truth?
The use of language also gets lost in the positive comments as well. For example, ‘ Johnny exudes excellent analytical and critical investigative skills’ .What does that say to a parent anyway? I might be writing it thinking back to a specific research project, but how can I really show and discuss that in a paragraph outlining all their other skills as well.
Therefore, my opinion on reports is they are a lot of fluff- and not a true blanket of what a students accomplishments or weaknesses truly are.
On that note, this has been another procrastination tactic… so I best get back to my fluff.
Like Adrienne, I quite like reports. The feedback and self-assessments done throughout the term are useful, but so specific to the assessment tasks. Comments are a moment to take a broader look. I tend to focus on attributes and approaches to learning that sometimes don’t get covered as well as they might otherwise. I’m quite happy to see parents come in to conferences with comments sheets highlighted and annotated.
As our school implements the Virtues Project, that is another useful tool — looking at virtues the students display and ones they should reach toward.
As a parent, I actually prefer a report card that is just focussed on student life. Every time I get a report about my own child, I go straight to the comment about how my child is working in social situations. How they are coping with conflict resolution and are they able to speak in front of a group with confidence. I am not so interested in how they have done in academics. I know how they are doing by their portfolio. I would rather come and see them in a learning situation than read about it in a report. And I find student led conferences way more informative.
Great responses everyone. I am soaking it all in and hope to have a reporting strategy for next term. Will share once it is sorted. Thanks again for making this blog a place to share ideas and improve teaching and learning.
You guys rock!
I feel your pain.
Pros of writing report card comments
Report card time makes me get my act together and really take a good long look at every kid. I would like to say that I do that all the time, but the reality is that kids slip in and out of the radar. I find that as I sit and write the comments, especially when the muse is with me, I . . . I don’t quite know how to say this without looking bad, but I find myself searching and finding the best in them and I feel quite emotionally connected to them. Fond, proud, worried, amused, . . . I usually have the students write their own report card comments and just edit them for errors or then make my additional comments. This helps me see what the student thought was important versus what I thought was important. I feel like there is always a fresh start after the reports go out and I am always optimistically hopeful, redundancy intended.
Cons of writing report cards
Generic comments weaken us professionally – they don’t show the parents we know their kids.
Parents don’t read the comments, especially overseas.
They take an incredible amount of time and resources.
They are either too short or too long or at the wrong time.
For now, I see the solution in a compromise. At least one written report to satisfy parents, schools and administrators and the rest of the time student led conferences, parent conferences, portfolios, random notes home.
Having said all that, I believe that assessment drives education and the things that we are assessing are still not necessarily the things that we value in student learning and as long as we are rigid in our thinking all the other changes are just window dressing.