The school reports
Personalise, personalise, personalise...
At the end of the summer term, my pupils all took home their end-of-year school reports. It was 15 July, and pupils across the school all received their reports on the same day. During the autumn and spring terms, my school had a parents' evening, but in the final term, it was the school report that did the talking. My school had a specific report template that every teacher had to use. It included specific spaces to write about personal and social development and progress in reading, writing and maths. The reports detailed whether a child was secure in a subject, mastery or developing.
A color-coded system was used to indicate behaviour and effort in lessons, with green indicating on or above, yellow showing almost there and red for below target. The reports included subject-specific targets and behaviour and learning targets for the next school year.
I really enjoyed writing my reports, and personalising them was really important to me. I knew my pupils well, and I wanted that to come across in each report. I included anecdotes about each pupil, and I hoped that each parent would get a sense that I really understood and cared about their child.
My mentor encouraged me to read the reports from the previous year 1 teachers, which was a really helpful exercise. They were all saved on the shared drive, along with templates for lower, middle and higher attainers. They were also helpful resources.
Report writing is a lengthy process, and it does take a little while to complete them all. I started writing my reports in April and did a few at a time. My headteacher very kindly gave staff a report writing day when the school was closed for polling day.
A senior member of staff proofread my reports, and the headteacher read and signed every report, which I thought was amazing. The head advised me on little things to tweak in my writing, and I was able to make the necessary edits. After reading my reports, my headteacher said that she could tell that I knew my pupils, which was really encouraging to hear :).
