How to Write Thoughtful Report Card Comments

A lot of students probably don’t realize that their teachers often dread report card season almost as much as they do (for different reasons, obviously). Writing report cards can be time-consuming and challenging, especially when you’re tasked with evaluating an entire semester’s worth of progress (or lack thereof) in just a few short sentences. To help you save some time and energy, here are some helpful tips for writing thoughtful report card comments.

Don’t Wait Until the End of the Term to Get Started

“Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.” Start making detailed notes of your students’ progress early on in the semester, so that come report card season, you’re up to speed on everything you want to say in your comments. Plus, this makes it easier to track each student’s progress and organize your thoughts when it comes time to put them down on paper.

Make Sure All Assignments Are Graded First

Last minute grading can set you behind a great deal when it comes to completing report cards.

All assignments that are included in the report card should be graded well in advance to help you save time and focus your energy on writing accurate comments. Plus, this will save you from having to go back and edit your comments after the late grades are submitted.

Use Teacher Tools to Organize Your Thoughts

Building on the previous point about taking detailed notes of your students’ progress throughout the semester, there are a number of helpful tools and teacher’s resources that include comment ideas for report cards. For instance, The Report Card Comments Collection offers a range of commonly used phrases and prompts across all subject matters that can easily be applied to any student’s report card. Comments are organized by subject, length, general to specific, and positive to negative. Each comment is marked accordingly, so that they’re easy to identify when you need them. You can also personalize and modify the comments as you see fit.

Enlist Peer Reviews

Teacher report card comments are important and there’s no harm in asking for help from your colleagues or people you know. Getting a fresh pair of eyes to review your comments ensures proper grammar usage and comprehensibility. Peers can evaluate the clarity of your comments and point out where corrections need to be made. Naturally, you can return the favour for them as well.

Stay Positive

As stressful as report card season is for teachers, it can be equally stressful for students. So try to keep a positive attitude and remind yourself that you’re doing this for the benefit of your students.   If you need help coming up with fresh report card comment ideas, TIMESAVERS for TEACHERS offers a variety of downloadable teaching aids and tools such as The Report Card Comments Collection that can make the process a little easier. Featuring over 1,800 downloadable teacher comments and remarks, this tool is well organized and a great timesaver for teachers of all