I know that this time of the quarter is a very busy time as you finish up your grading and add thoughtful comments to help keep your students' parents informed. While it is easy to get caught up in seeing this big task as busy work I'd like to remind everyone that the work you do this week is very important to parents. While each of you does as much as you can to reach out and make connections with parents of individual students, keeping them informed of their progress, the report card is typically the biggest form of feedback. Whether you are a parent yourself or not, please take a moment to "step outside your teacher self" to read your comments with a "parent hat" on and ask yourself if the feedback shares both a strength and something to work on in a positive tone. As always, remember that surprises on a report card are never a good thing. If you have a child whose grade has slipped since the last time you informed parents, please make sure that you make a phone call home to let them know.
How can you include students in this feedback process? We know that feedback is what helps students grow, so including them in report cards can be powerful. One idea would be to conference with students individually so they see their report card before it goes home and give them the time to ask you any questions and write a goal for themselves. Then when the report card goes home, students will be able to explain to parents what their grades mean and talk about their goal for next quarter. Just think of the parent phone calls that might prevent if the child can answer the question to why a certain grade is what it is?
I'm sure you all will have other great ideas on including students in this process to have ownership of their learning, so please feel free to share with one another. And if you've got any sort of resource that you've created for this and would like to include it as an artifact in your documentation log, it would go in Standard 4: Assessment for and of Learning.
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