✏️ Deciding on a Report Format

My biggest piece of advice? Think long-term.

Here’s the thing. The prospect of writing a narrative report for every student is pretty overwhelming. I mean, the idea of doing justice to the entire year of progress and development in a document review just seems pretty impossible.

The good news is that once you decide on a structure, things get a LOT easier. And once you write the first report, things get EVEN easier.

In my experience, most schools do NOT have a unified approach to report format from teacher to teacher. At my school, we had many meetings where we tried to agree upon a format but we never accomplished it. As with so many things at a Waldorf school, teacher freedom reigns supreme.

However, having a consistent reporting format throughout the school has many benefits. If teachers can agree on a structure, parents with siblings won’t compare their children’s teachers, and teachers can rely on each other for report-writing suggestions and advice. Figuring out the structure of your reports is a huge hurdle. Having that already done for you is worth giving up a little teacher freedom (in my not-so-humble opinion).

In a recent post, I outlined some of the things to think about when creating a report structure and took a deep dive into my 2nd-grade report structure, including some of the math and language arts benchmarks I measured.

This week’s download is a rundown of how your report structure might be different throughout the grades. If you’re a paid member, make sure you scroll down and hit the link.

To Rubric or Not to Rubric, That is the Question

There is something that feels against our humanist Waldorf sensibilities to use a rubric to summarize student progress. And though it’s true I would never want a child to sum up their performance with a checkmark in a certain column, if we do not use a rubric, we risk parents not reading any of the report.

So, I did use rubrics throughout the grades. One of my colleagues and I collaborated on a rubric and studentship benchmarks for 4th and 5th grade that we ended up being really happy with. I’ve included those charts in the downloads for this post, too.

Creating the scale is also a challenge, and to me, the biggest question is whether you use four levels or five. One of my colleagues was absolutely opposed to using an odd number of levels. She said that teachers are too inclined to choose the middle level and that having to choose above or below average is a good exercise. I remember not feeling as strongly about it, and also worrying a bit that parents might unnecessarily respond with concern if they saw their child’s mark below the middle.

Still, the scale that I used in fourth and fifth grade has four levels (and a “not assessed” measure because it was during the pandemic.) Here’s that scale:

• S: Area of Strength, Consistently exceeds expectations

• P: Progressing Well, Consistently meets expectations

• D: Developing, Working towards meeting expectations

• E: Emerging, Working towards understanding expectations

Hope this helps with your report-writing. Do you use a rubric? What are the measures you use? Leave a comment and share with the class. 😊