End of Year Report

Reports throughout my years of teaching have gone from handwritten to typed, three to four pages of written comments about EVERY subject to 1-2 pages of short, sharp and to the point comments. Schools comment on their values and now look at aspects other than reading, writing and maths.

As a school we have moved away from our previous report system to a new one. We already had a very simple format that didn’t involve a lot of writing (which I loved) but it was labouring in the fact that the computer system we used wasn’t very user friendly.

 Because we changed over computer programmes, we couldn’t transfer our old report template over. Also rather than making more changes in two years which would cost quite a considerable amount the decision was made to create a new report format to take over to the new site.

I have to admit the report looks great.  A4 double sided, atheistically pleasing and straight forward. All our assessments are computerised and therefore automatically update into the report. As I now teach year 3/4  I have to deal with Interim and end of year reports. This tells me straight away which report I need and for what child. It calculates attendance and puts in all the necessary information regarding National assessments and even tells parents when their child’s next report will be sent out. What could be easier?

Reading, writing and maths comments are of a decent size and we have added in next steps for parents so they can help at home. Our Values and Graduate Profile are simple click in the circle to show them where they are at so very easy to do.

I also like that we have changed the wording in our reports. I was never happy with the ‘below standard’ word as we all know students learn at their own pace and some may just not be there ‘yet’. I like the wording ‘Learning Towards as I think it is more positive. I am still not too sure about the ‘Effort’ comments of ‘improving’, ‘expected’ and ‘Consistently high’.’ Improving’ I don’t mind but the word ‘expected’ I am not sure about. To me it sounds like we are saying that no effort was actually put in as that is what we think your child is capable of anyway.  Maybe it is just me? I find the whole notion of how some teachers decide what ‘effort’ level a child should have very interesting (maybe a post on that one day).

My only other issue was the ‘General Comment’ only two lines. I guess some teachers would love that but the teacher/parent in me always feels this is the most important part of a report. As a teacher and a parent it lets me highlight other areas or attributes a child has that may not always come through in the reading, writing, and maths comments. Let’s be honest not every child is going exceed these areas and it is one area that teachers can add to that makes a student shine.  And as a parent that’s what I want. It also gives teachers the chance to really talk about the student where the other comments are what they can/cannot do academically.

So I made a comment about this. The only issue by allowing another line (which I still don’t think is enough space) we would then have to create a new page. So my question is do ALL other schools for every report have the Learning Levels of the NZ curriculum on them? As my theory is, take this off more room for the comments. In the other areas we comment where they are so do we need this? Could it be placed on a separate piece of paper?

Ideas?