How to Make Your Report Cards Easier

This can be one of the most daunting tasks of the entire year.  Not only do you have to keep tabs and continuously assess, you have to do it for the entire school.  Even as a professional of many years, it can be overwhelming unless you have the necessary systems in place.  Writing report cards for elementary music can be simplified and recycled to make your future life easier!

Before Planning- Look at the Curriculum

This can also look a little crazy, but it helps to break down the information into smaller bites.  You can do this several ways- by grade level, content, or other outcome.  Figure out what the goal is and start at the end.  For example, if you teach grade 3 music, what do they need to know before going into grade 4? Specific rhythms, composers, songs?

Once you have decided where they need to be, work backwards.  How do you get your groups to that point?  Figure out what kind of activities you require to teach.  

Lesson Plan with Report Cards in Mind

Now when you are lesson planning, decide rubrics and marking strategies.  What kind of expectations do you have for projects?  What rate of skill competency needs to be performed?  Whatever you decide, write it down!  Some schools use number systems for marking while others use letter grades.  Whichever the case, visually seeing the expectations will help you.  

For example reports:

By the end of grade 3, students can read, notate, dictate and perform sixteenth notes.

4/4 = student exceeds expectations independently (student can read and perform sixteenth notes accurately using body percussion and auxiliary percussion independently and with a group)

3/4 = student usually meets expectations independently (student can usually identify and notate sixteenth notes accurately when singing or playing rhythms)

2/4 = student sometimes meet expectations with prompts (student can sometimes identify and play sixteenth notes with prompting) 

1/4 = student does not meet expectations (student has difficulty accurately identifying or performing sixteenth notes)

You can take it a step further and break down the concept into smaller chunks such as dictating and notating or composing and performing sixteenth notes.   For each number, also have a recommendation. The formula for my division states: Strength, Challenge, Next Step. For example, for a mark 3/4:

Tips for Report Cards

Long story short, it can take a long time to initially set up this system.  But when you do, it makes everything so much easier!  Depending on your school, you can even cheat a little bit when writing your comments. 

1. Type your comments into a document and then copy and paste!  All of your students have learned the same content so you shouldn’t need to vary your comments.  If you do, look at your previous lesson plans and create a comment bank for those lessons and switch which ones to copy and paste.
2. Remove Qualifiers– don’t write your comments using “he” or “she”.  First of all, it makes copy and pasting so much easier.  Second, you could likely run into issues of gender identity.  Keep it a level playing ground and just remove all of it.
3. Batch your report cards! Complete grades in sections.  It will go much quicker if you complete all of grade one, all of grade two, etc in sections so your brain doesn’t have to continuously switch.  
4. Batch your comments.  Do the number, and then the comments.  Fill in all of the numbers first.  Once you have all your numbers filled in, you can paste the comments that match all of the fours, then all of the threes, etc . . . 
5. Give yourself lots of breaks.  Report cards suck a lot of time and energy, especially during busy seasons or end of the year.  Set up mini rewards like a chocolate bar or a coffee.  Go for a walk or watch a short episode.  Keep yourself excited, motivated and relax!

Happy reporting!