 The
Ministry of Education will be introducing a new "Fall Progress
Report Card" for the 2010 - 2011 school year that is intended
to alleviate concerns among educators that two months into the
school year was too early to give a formal report card grade to
students in the elementary grades. Teachers have always maintained
that they have sufficient information to report to parents whether
or not their child is making progress in most areas, but there is
usually not enough evidence to accurately assign a mark or grade to
the student in each of the specific subject areas. Hence, the first
term report card marks were often not a very good indication of the
progress of a child.
The new report card will still indicate the progress of a student
in the same subject areas as found on the current report card, but
instead of assigning a grade or mark, it will indicate how a student
is progressing with the following terms:
(1) Progressing With Difficulty,
(2) Progressing Well, or
(3) Progressing Very Well.
The Fall Progress Report Card is mandatory and will still count
towards the student's overall assessment. This means that it will
become part of the OSR file for the student just as with other
report cards. In addition, it will still be the essential guide when
it comes to the fall parent-teacher interview.
The Fall Progress Report Card is the result from testing that was
done in pilot projects in 60 schools and nine school boards.
One of the most positive features of the fall progress report
card is that it will place a strong emphasis on the development of
learning skills and work habits. Students' achievement of six
learning skills and habits will be shown on the front page of the
progress report card. These are:
(1) Responsibility,
(2) Organization,
(3) Independent Work,
(4) Collaboration,
(5) Initiative, and
(6) Self-Regulation.
The development of these skills and habits will be reported as
"excellent", "good", "satisfactory" or
"needs improvement". In addition, sufficient space will be
provided for teacher comments about the particular strengths of the
student in each of those six areas and in areas for improvement.
This part of the report card will turn out to be a very meaningful
section and will allow teachers to provide some very specific
suggestions for the parent. It is clear to see that the Fall
Progress Report Card will be a significant element of the fall
interviews. Much of the interview will be conducted from the report
card comments.
THE NEXT STEP
There are three formal reporting periods at the elementary school
level. Nevertheless, it is Ministry and Board policy that
communication with parents and students about student achievement
should be continuous from the beginning to the end of school. We
have three "report cards", but interviews, phone calls,
notes home and special meetings are all part of the process. There
are even some schools that send out interim progress report
cards.
I would suggest that that the implementation of the "Fall
Progress Report Card" is simply the "interim" step to
adopting the use of the internet to provide parents with instant
access to an on-going, continuous progress report which would allow
for two-way communication between the parent and the teacher. For
example, it wouldn't take much to find a software program which
would allow a teacher to continuously input a student's "online
report" to reflect changes in progress. It could even include a
running record of tests and assignments along with their marks so
that parents could monitor the progress from home on their own
computer. Teachers would be able to constantly add comments that
would identify strengths and weaknesses in all areas throughout the
school year.
The beauty of a "Continuous Progress Report Card" is
that it would simply be a place which would demonstrate the existing
assessment of students that is already being done throughout the
course of the year. However, instead of going through the mad
scramble of making sure there are enough marks to prepare formal
report cards in order to meet deadlines, teachers will be able to
conduct their classes in accordance with the needs of their
students. As evaluations are done during the year they will be
posted on the student profiles and a running average will be
available for viewing at any time. Teachers will be able to review
the "report" of each child during the month to update the
records and add necessary comments to explain the progress or lack
thereof. Emails will be able to keep parents up-to-date with the
progress report so that they are kept informed and can become more
involved in the education of their children.
This "Continuous Progress Report Card" won't involve
any more work for teachers, but it will certainly alleviate the
stress that occurs three times a year to get report cards out to
parents. Each time you look at the "Continuous" report you
will be seeing what your child's report card would look like if it
were printed at that time. You would also be able to review the
"historical" development of your child and have access to
previous marks and comments.
The secondary schools are already moving in this direction ( Instant
Access To Marks Over The Internet May Lead to A Whole New Way of
Reporting Student Evaluation ). It is only a matter of time
before we see the internet used to improve the reporting process at
the elementary school level. |
