What’s the purpose of a report card?
- To assess your child’s academic progress.
- To identify your child’s strengths – in the long run this should form part of subject and career choices.
- To identify the specific areas in each subject that your child might need extra support in.
- An opportunity to get the teacher’s formal feedback of what they think about your child’s progress and to start a conversation about this.
Report cards can either have achievement standards (which is a description of how well your child has mastered something) or percentages (a point out of 100) on to indicate your child’s progress/performance.
Things to do when you look at a report card
- Use the rubric to understand what the grading mean. Whether they use numbers or letters you will need to check the rubric to know what it means, for example, Excels (4), Proficient (3), Approaching Proficiency (2), Well Below Proficiency or Not Yet (1).
- Make sure you understand the different things that are being measured in each subject/category. If you don’t know what visual perception or creative writing means for example, then ask the teacher. The teacher will be able to give you ideas of how to develop that specific skill at home.
- Take comments seriously. Teachers usually only mention something in a report card if it’s present most of the time.
- If it’s a predetermined set of comments from which the teacher gave you feedback and you want to know more, be sure to ask. Some schools give the teachers a list of comments from which they work to give you feedback. This can work, but you might want some extra insights and shouldn’t be scared to ask or have a conversation about it.
- If there is a class average on the report card it could tell you how most of the students did. It could happen that your child worked hard and still scored below the class average. This is okay, it merely tells you that it might not be a natural strength and that your child will have to work hard in this subject. If there’s a back log or something your child missed out on, give extra attention and help them master it.
- Praise a good report card and all the effort your child put in over the term. Talk about a bad report card and identify the areas that should be addressed.
You might also want to read about what needs to be taught at home.
