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April 4, 2008
The envelope, please!
Kids' report cards are helpful, not threatening.
ADAM GELMON
Over the next few weeks, elementary school students will be coming home with their second-term report cards, and parent reactions will range from "I'm so proud of you!" to "There are going to be some major changes around here!"
Second-term report cards can provide an excellent opportunity to talk with your kids about how school is going for them. Not only do reports give a good picture of where your child stands in their coursework, but they also give enough time to build on the successes and work on the areas that need improvement before the finality of the end-of-year reports.
By this point in the school year, we teachers have been working with your kids for more than six months and we have a very good idea of your kids' learning styles. Parents and students will also be more familiar with the teaching style and evaluating method of their teachers than they were in the first term, thus bringing more clarity to the report card.
Don't examine the second report card without pulling out the report from first term. With the two reports together, you'll be able to see where growth has occurred and where your child might be stalling and in need of more support. For this to be effective, do this with your child, so that they can get a good visual of where they are and where they've been.
While letter grades are usually the stars of the show on a report card, if you look beyond the letters and read between the lines, you'll often see a lot more. Letter grades alone don't encapsulate an entire term of learning, nor will they give you all of the information that you need to gauge your child's progress. Letter grades will tell you much more when read alongside the accompanying comments.
Report card comments that make reference to faltering organization skills and incomplete homework are not necessarily reasons to panic. Take this time to have an honest look at what's going on in your child's life. If your child is involved in hours of extracurricular activities, perhaps it's time to re-evaluate their schedule. Kids need time to do their homework and to rest. If your child frequently tells you that they don't have any homework, but the report reads differently, perhaps it's time to come up with a better system for doing and monitoring homework.
On the other hand, comments that praise an ability to work independently and in a team, celebrate work ethic and applaud contributions to the class should be given the same weight as any glowing letter grade. I'm sure most of us would much rather work with a co-operative team member over a high-achieving but difficult-to-work-with person any day.
Put report marks in the context of what happened in your child's life during the term. Illnesses, family issues and other major events, both positive and negative, can have a huge impact on academic performance. It is important to decipher whether the grades are temporary blips or symptoms of longer-term issues.
As your children make their way through school, report cards will give progressively less information. The paragraph-long comments of elementary school will give way to one-line comments in high school. Take advantage of the rich information that you receive in the elementary years to support your children to succeed. Learning issues and difficulties that are not dealt with at a young age rarely disappear in the high school years.
If you or your child are unclear about a mark, or would like some suggestions on how to improve for the next term, please just ask. Teachers will often have ideas on how you can support your child's academic growth at home. Conversely, if you have some insight or information that we could use to support your child better, please let us know.
Besides grades and comments, look out for the record of late attendance and days absent. Students who are even a few minutes late for school on a regular basis are often negatively affected: students who are rushing in the morning because of lateness tend to begin the day overstressed and under-prepared. If the record of lates and absences are higher than you were expecting, you may want to rethink the morning routine.
Look at report cards as "what do I need help with" and "what am I doing well in" cards. Report cards give parents and students a very important window into what is going on at school, and you should use every bit of information that you can glean from them to help your children to become lifelong learners who can take a critical look at their own performance in order to continually strive for excellence.
Adam Gelmon is a teacher at Vancouver Talmud Torah who is currently completing his master's degree in education. He can be reached at [email protected].
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