Writing Report Card Comments

Parents read the comment before the marks, and remember it long after. It is also the part teachers write thirty of on a Sunday evening, which is how the phrases that say nothing come to exist. The report card layouts here leave a full comment box rather than a two-line strip, for exactly that reason.

The shape that works

1. One specific strength. Not "a pleasure to teach" - something you actually saw. "Ayesha explained her method to the group without being asked."
2. One thing to work on, described as an action. "Would benefit from writing the working out before the answer" can be helped with at home. "Needs to try harder" cannot.
3. One sentence looking forward. Short. This is where the tone is set.

Phrases to avoid

• "Satisfactory." Says nothing, and reads as disappointment.
• "Could do better." True of everyone alive, actionable by nobody.
• "Lacks confidence." A description of a symptom, not something a parent can work with. Say what happens instead: "hesitates to answer aloud, though her written work is strong."
• "Chatty." A complaint about your lesson dressed as a comment about the child.

Raising a real problem

Name the behaviour, not the character. "Hamza has been late to four lessons this term" is a fact a family can address - and a fact your attendance register can support if it is questioned. "Hamza is lazy" is a judgement they will defend against, and the conversation ends there. Where the issue is serious, the report is the wrong place to break the news - it should already have been said in person.

Length

Three or four sentences. A long comment is read as a warning sign regardless of what it says, and a short specific one is read twice.

Write them in one sitting, but not in one voice

The efficiency of doing thirty at once is real; the risk is that they start sounding identical. Read three in a row aloud - if you cannot tell the children apart from the comments, none of them are specific enough yet.