Likely the easiest way to demonstrate my abilities in reporting is to show you some examples of comments that I wrote for report cards. This first example was written for a K2 student in the first Communication of Learning in the fall. Names have been removed for privacy.
We are so excited to welcome __________ back to school and are thrilled to have him in our classroom this year! _______ transitioned back to school very well, and it is clear he enjoys being back in the learning environment. He has quickly learned our classroom routines and often does them with only a few reminders. Both myself and Mrs. King are new educators for ______ this year, and so there was a period of adjustment in getting used to the differences between our classroom and his previous one. But, with time, he has become very comfortable with us and we are lucky to have him as part of our classroom family. _________ is a very dedicated learner and seems to be focused on getting things right and not making mistakes. He will often get quite upset when he makes an error in a task and he doesn’t know how to fix it. We are working with him to help him understand that making mistakes is okay, that they do happen and they don’t mean anything bad. More importantly, we are not always able to fix our mistakes, sometimes we just have to accept that they happened and move on. This is a hard lesson to learn, so it will take some time, but we believe that with a supportive learning environment he will overcome these feelings in time. __________ engages easily during whole group activities and we often will call upon him when we need an answer from a friend. He focuses well and listens to educators. Having said this, he can sometimes be in his own headspace and it can be difficult to get him out and focus back where he should be. ________ is learning that he needs to take care of his belongings. We are always finding his cubby is a mess with his things spread all around his cubby and on the floor. We will continue to encourage him to unpack neatly and make sure everything is hanging in his cubby. _______ loves to be at our craft center, and he says that he likes to draw and write things that he can bring home to show to his sister. What a great brother she has for wanting to share his learning! We are so excited to see where ________’s learning journey will take him this year, and we look forward to seeing more of his personality as time goes on!
This next example comes from the Term 1 Report Card and it was written for a K1 student with whom we had been having significant challenges. Please note that this is missing a comment for the Problem Solving and Innovation frame as I was not responsible for reporting on this during my LTO there.
Belonging and Contributing: _______________ has made a lot of progress towards finding his place in our classroom and we are so glad to see how he grows. He is encouraged to explore a variety of learning centers in the classroom without prompting from an educator. He particularly enjoys activities where he can be by himself or working one on one with an educator. He loves to make crafts and read stories. ___________ takes care of our classroom environment and materials, never using more than he thinks he needs. He does get along well with his peers but tends to stick to a select few that he is comfortable with and will open up to them. ____________ is encouraged to open up to educators one on one and to participate and share ideas in whole group discussions.
Self-regulation and Well-being: _____________ is learning to follow classroom routines independently and has responded well to the use of a sand timer when getting ready for outside or coming inside. He likes to try and “beat the timer” and that has been a huge help in encouraging him to complete tasks on his own. He particularly enjoys being one-on-one with educators and will sometimes open up and share his feelings with a lot of prompting. _______________ is encouraged to express his feelings and wants to his friends – if he doesn’t want to play in a certain area, it’s okay to say “I’d like to play somewhere else”.
Demonstrating Literacy and Numeracy: ______________ is learning to recognize the upper and lower case letters of the alphabet as well as recognize their corresponding sounds. He is working on writing the letters and does well with prompting from an educator. He knows what letters are in his name, the order they come in and has improved greatly in his ability to write them clearly and independently without tracing. He is able to identify and write the numbers from 0-5 and is working on writing the numbers 6-10. He can easily sort objects by shape, colour and size and is encouraged to use his language to communicate his thinking.
Although I was not responsible for writing the Term 2 Report Cards as my LTO at Parkview ended May 13th, I took the liberty of writing extensive notes on each child for the returning classroom teacher to help her out. Here is an example of the kinds of things I was looking to report on for the Term 2 Reports. These are written in point form for a K1 student – they are intentionally extensive so that the returning teacher had lots to go on for her reports.
Belonging and Contributing
- Personality: _________ is a hard-working student that has a passion for learning. He is so invested in his learning and focusses easily, especially when it is something he has chosen to do. We love his dedication to learning!
- What we love: Loves to be at school and is passionate about learning new things. Is very proud of his hard work and loves to show it off to educators
- Biggest social accomplishment: _________ had some trouble at the start of the year with keeping his hands to himself, however, he has worked hard at using his words to communicate his desires and needs.
- What still needs work socially: __________ still has quite some difficulty with sharing and understanding that it can’t always be his turn. Often, when this happens, he will escape and hide in his cubby (sometimes without the educators even seeing him leave). We have spoken to him and his parents about this to make sure that he knows that is not the correct response.
- Making friends: _________ is friendly with many students in our class, but I wouldn’t say that he has created close friendships. I think because he can get so easily absorbed into a task, he doesn’t often notice others around him, which makes it difficult to create friendships
Self-regulation and well-being
- Character trait award: It was an easy choice for us as to who would receive the Enthusiasm Character Trait award because ________ displays so much enthusiasm about school. He is always making new observations and connections
- How they play: Overall, ________ plays well with others, though he mostly likes to stick to himself during play.
- What they play with: __________ loves many activities, though he particularly enjoys any math and literacy activities where he can show off his skills. He also really loves our dramatic play area – the Post Office was easily his favourite!
- Coping with feelings: _______ tends to be quite emotional and to want to run away and be alone when he gets upset. Taking some time to yourself when you are working through feelings is okay, but there is a right way to do that (tell an educator what you need and find solutions such as going into the cozy cube) and a wrong way to do that (sneaking out of the classroom to hide in your cubby and refuse to come out and talk)
- Independence in routines: ____________ knows our classroom routines very well and does not need reminders about them
Demonstrating Mathematics and Literacy Behaviours
- Improvements from last report: Loves math and is able to communicate his thinking clearly. He makes fantastic observations during our math lessons and he is able to clearly make connections, and communicate those connections
- Continuing struggles: _________ is continuing to excel in both subject areas
- Beginning and ending sounds: ________ can identify the beginning and ending sounds of words
- Rhyming: _______ can easily identify when two words rhyme and can come up with rhyming pairs of his own
- CVC words: Was very excited when he learned we would be talking about CVC words because he couldn’t wait to be able to spell words like his big brother. Since he knows his letter sounds well, CVC words were a reasonable challenge for _________. He is able to blend letter sounds together to form words, which is helping him to sound out other words on his own
- Sight words: thanks to some amazing support from home, ________ excelled at learning his sight words!
- Measurement (length, weight, capacity):
- Shapes (2D and 3D): Can identify 2D shapes such as circles, squares and hexagons as well as communicate their attributes (a square has 4 sides and 4 vertices). 3D figures were more complicated, but with the foundations he gained from our 2D shape unit, he is able to identify basic 3D figures (cylinder, cone, cube) as well as their attributes (a cylinder has 2 faces, 0 edges and 0 vertices)
- Graphing: can collect data and represent it in both tally marks and in a bar graph. Is also able to answer questions about the data using the graph that they made.
- Subitizing: easily subitizes numbers within 10 and can even count numbers beyond 10 with very little difficulty