It’s report card time. Report cards are a great way to show student growth BUT you can spend a lot of time doing report cards. And if you don’t handle report cards just right, your best intentions can backfire and make your teacher life pretty miserable.

Looking for the free Report Card Word and Phrase Bank with Report Card Template? 
Here's the link: www.makingthebasicsfun.com/reportcardcommentbank

Here are the 6 Report Card Dos & Don’ts. Keep reading to get more info on each. 

• Don’t rely completely on a number in a grade book.

Do have a student folder with work samples to support percentage/grades/skills.

• Don’t have data and students work in several places.

Do organized data in one spot for easy and quick reference.

• Don’t write a new report card comment for each student.

Do use a report card template and word/comment bank to structure and quickly fill in student data and observations.

• Don’t reveal a problem area in a report card without talking with parents about the skill/behavior deficit first.

Do communicate with parents before report cards come out about any problems.

• Don’t use negative language in report card comments to describe a child or their skill/behavior.

Do use positive language to describe skills/behaviors deficit. 

• Don’t tell parents about a problem without explaining how you are helping the child remediate the issue.

Do give specifics on exactly how the child is not on level and how you are working with the child to meet our exceed specific skills and/or behaviors. Plus, give strategies and materials parents can use to help the child. 

Using puppets to teach (or reteach) classroom rules can help your students stay engaged and able to remember the classroom rules. 

A puppet is magical. Today you will get some tips and how-tos when it comes to making the most of puppet friend. 

Making a classroom job chart and assigning your students classroom jobs is a complete waste of time. 

If you have a job chart in your classroom it’s time to stop how you are doing classroom jobs and do this instead.

You might feel like you have to set-up classroom jobs for your K-1 students. 

There’s the  traditional way and the smart way.

You don’t need jobs like librarian, weather reporter, line leader, or paper passer assigned to your students. 

They are either going to forget to do their jobs or you will have to remind them. Do you even know who’s the weather reporter?  Did you change the chart? 

The old method is just inviting all sorts of chaos into your classroom.

Stop making your teacher life so hard, do this instead.

It’s called Happy Helper.

Have a question or a request for an episode. 
Find me on Instagram
@makingthebasicsfun
or
@rockinthisteacherthing