Memorable Mathematics: Report Card Writing

Report card writing has always seemed pretty daunting to me. It's one of those things that we talk about a lot, but don't get a ton of practice in. Don't get me wrong, it's difficult when every board uses a slightly different program for their report cards. However, it seems like a pretty large gap in my education as a teacher candidate.

Luckily for me... webinars to the rescue! This week's webinar was on report card writing, and was possibly one of the most helpful 45 minutes I've had in a while! Not only was it explained well, but we got time to practice.

Let me explain further.

First we got to practice how to determine a student's grade based on a number of assessments that we had theoretically collected. The great part about this exercise was that some of the assessments were on the organization of the student's notes and on how many times they had completed homework. Trying to trick us eh? Thankfully, we all pointed out that these marks shouldn't be taken into account for the mark of the student, as they are a greater reflection of his learning skills and work habits, and not his understanding of the content. The next interesting thing about the marks we had "collected" were that there was a huge jump in marks from the first assessment to the last few assessments. We all decided that the student had made great progress, and that the first quiz was more of a diagnostic assessment. It allowed us to see that over the course of the unit, the student's understanding of the concepts had increased, and by the end of the unit, the student had grasped considerable knowledge of the subject matter. Therefore, as a group throughout the webinar, we were able to discuss what mark we would give the students and rationalize why we would give that mark. The following photo is the activity that we participated in, along with our notes.

Elizabeth O'Brien. (October 2017). Activity 1: What Would You Do? [Screen Shot].

Then we were taken through some activities with writing report card comments. First, we were shown some of the different strategies that should be used when writing effective report card comments. These strategies were clearly laid out for us, and were super helpful when we came to the practice section. We were given ineffective report card comments, and tasked with rewriting them. I think this was a great way to do it, because it allowed us the opportunity to see what to do and what not to do. We were able to work from something that we knew needed to be change, and add our own flavour to the comment.

Overall, I think that this webinar was one of the most helpful ones we've had. I think the topic is extremely important and often overlooked in our classes. Luckily for us, our presenter also provided us with so many opportunities to practice and learn, that we all took a lot out of it. And just like that, I feel a little more confident in writing report cards!