Past Principal Points
New
Report Cards
Today’s envelope includes a Progress Report for
your child(ren). They have
been entirely redesigned. (The report cards, that isJ) We hope that the new
format will enable us to be more efficient with our time and continue to give
parents as much or more information as in the past. There are three
different styles to meet the needs of the different age groups: Elementary,
Junior High, and Senior High, and within these basic
formats there is some further customization to accommodate different courses
being taught. (For example, primary
students do not take French or Drama while upper elementary students do; junior
and senior high students take a variety of options that not only differ by
grade but also by student.) There may also be some further variations from
teacher to teacher as not every computer and printer cooperated as we had
hoped.
The biggest change will be noticed at the senior
high level. As the school has grown in size and students have more and more
teachers, it has become much more difficult for every teacher to give feedback
for every student in every subject. This is due to the sheer number of students
and the time required to comment on each one as well
as the fact that there isn’t enough room to get all the comments on one report
card. The new
design allows room for each teacher to note areas for improvement for each
student in each subject by using coded comments. This will provide more
detail than simply the effort mark used in the past. There is still room for
additional written comments if needed, but these will be from the homeroom
teacher only. (This one change immediately saves high school teachers a three
hour meeting every quarter. In the past teachers had to review every student
and get comments from one another which then had to be condensed into a
paragraph.)
Another small change is that there is no place for a parent signature on these cards
because we will not need to have them returned. Each quarter a new
report card will be printed which will contain the data from all previous
quarters. (We may print the final report card on heavier stock to be kept more
permanently.)
Overall,
teachers have found this process to be quite a bit faster. Written comments can be
edited more easily; there is no need to white out an adjusted mark; there is no
more writers’ cramp; no need to paste in typed comments, and it seems to be
reducing the overall time to complete them. Finally, each report card can be customized based on the subjects
the individual student is taking. Again, this is primarily a senior high issue,
but with increased numbers of courses being offered, there are a lot of
variations from student to student.
We trust that these new Progress Reports will be
understandable and comprehensive, and that parents will be as well informed or
better than in the past. With our practice of issuing four Progress Reports per
year (many schools send three) and sending out detailed marks for secondary
students by email, we are attempting to provide parents with as much relevant
information as possible. If we can continue to do
this while making the teachers’ job a bit easier, then we have been successful.
Please let us know what you think.
Principal,
Copyright © 2003/2004 Airdrie Koinonia Christian
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