Student Reports - Tips for Writing Report Cards

The following tips and examples will help teachers write clear, concise and meaningful comments by focusing on avoiding unnecessary information, jargon and other specialist terms.

Topics on this page include:

• Make comments easy to understand
• Avoid unnecessary information
• Do not use specialist terms
• Avoid very detailed curriculum descriptions
• Avoid comments which refer only to task completion
• Use evidence
• Focus on key aspects

Make comments easy to understand

Two connected ideas per sentence is an effective way of using the space available in the student report. The two ideas should be closely related and the first idea may introduce a topic, while the second may add detail to illustrate a quality of a student’s work. For example:

• John’s oral report on ‘families’ was informative (first idea), with several humorous anecdotes he had collected from elderly neighbours (second idea).

Alternatively, the second idea may provide a comparison between possible approaches to completing work. For example:

• Kate needs to use the internet more widely when researching (first idea) rather than relying on one or two sources for her assignments (second idea).

The second idea may also describe an associated kind of behaviour you wish to comment on, such as:

• She shared information with the team (first idea) and worked cooperatively to complete tasks on time (second idea).

Generally, sentences should be short and no longer than 25 words.

Avoid unnecessary information

Evaluate the aspects of a student’s achievement and the improvements required in order to select the most important matters for the report. Avoid crowding the report with less important details and being too detailed.

Delete redundant words or sentences that do not change the meaning. For example, ‘a range of different ideas’ says no more than ‘a range of ideas’.

Ensure the content of each section relates exclusively to that section. Some matters may be best reported in a different section. The content of the report should describe coherent links between the areas of achievement, the way forward, and the school’s and the parents’ roles in supporting this improvement.

Avoid unnecessary or repetitious expressions. ‘Padding’ adds no helpful information and takes up valuable space.

Less important information may be deferred to an interview or a conversation with the parent.

Do not use specialist terms

The report card should present information in clear, jargon-free language. For example, ‘higher order thinking’ represents a meaningful concept to teachers but not to most parents. Word choice should reflect community understanding, not professional terminology. For example, ‘He has appropriately completed all of the nominated tasks’ really means ‘He completed all the expected work’.

Avoid detailed curriculum descriptions

Do not include detailed curriculum statements or lists of all the topics, learning activities and assignments covered. Parents are more interested in how their child is progressing towards expected levels of achievement and where they need to improve.

Avoid comments which refer only to task completion

Avoid comments that only refer to task completion and do not provide an evaluation. For example, do not write comments such as:

• ‘Natalie has completed the course requirements.’
  There is no evaluation here and no indication of how well she has done.
• ‘Justin has read the required four wide reading texts.’
  This is unhelpful unless it represents evidence of a real achievement for Justin, perhaps identified in an earlier report as a goal. Consider if the four texts were suitably demanding for his stage of learning and where or not he produced any kinds of responses to them.
• ‘Tom enjoys using the computer for his presentations and has successfully completed a number of PowerPoint presentations this year.’
  This comment refers to enjoyment and task completion rather than learning achievement. Some kind of evaluation of Tom’s achievement relative to the standards is needed.

Parents want to know what was learnt and how well, where improvement is needed and what should be done next.

Use evidence

Reports of judgements made about student achievement must be based on quality evidence of what each student has actually achieved against the standards. The evidence that sits behind the overall judgement and the scores and rating assigned provides the detail for the written comments about specific:

• areas of strength and specific areas for improvement
• ways to help the student continue to learn and develop future pathways
• ways for parents to assist the student’s learning.

Focus on key aspects

Below is a primary report card demonstrating the importance of ensuring an appropriate (but not necessarily comprehensive) coverage of the domains in the various sections of the report card.

It is not always possible to include comments on all domains in every report, so it is important to identify aspects of achievement that are the most important.

Primary report card (PDF - 51Kb) - in this sample primary report card, the student’s achievement is varied.