Why Encouragement Is Important on Your Students’ Report Cards

A student’s report card provides more than just a glance into their academic and behavioural achievements, strengths, and weaknesses over a time period. Creating encouraging remarks within the report card’s comments section can lay a path of support and motivation for years to come.

With the right encouragement and motivation, it can help a student be more effective in class, more creative, more positive, and increase their cognitive processing across all subjects.

Adds Motivation and Confidence Boost

Using report card comments to motivate a student requires precise wording to nurture and inspire the student’s educational journey. Without motivation, a student quickly becomes bored or less attentive which can lead to a drop in grades and disruptive behaviour in the classroom.

It should be noted that not all students displaying a lack of interest are unmotivated. Their own distraction or lack of motivation may be due to a learning deficit which requires extra encouragement and support.

In a classroom of students with various learning curves, it is important that the teacher involves everyone in motivational tasks, even the ones who appear to be self-motivated. All students need to be continuously inspired and encouraged to see their self-confidence grow and develop into a lifelong skill.

Fosters a Growth Mindset in Students

By fostering a growth mindset, teachers can encourage their students to value effort and perseverance over innate intelligence or talent. This means celebrating not just the end result, but also the process of learning itself.

Teachers can help also students develop a growth mindset by teaching them about the brain’s plasticity—the idea that the brain can develop and change through hard work and practice. By reframing mistakes and setbacks as opportunities for growth and learning, they can also help students to develop resilience and a willingness to take risks.

What Are Words of Encouragement for Students?

Using the right words of encouragement can help direct your students on the right educational path for their future. Teachers, counsellors, and other education professionals can provide positive reinforcement in the report card comments.

Consider the following inspirations:

“Believe it or not, tough times often quickly dissolve into easier times. You’ve got what it takes to get past a tough time”.

“You don’t know what you’re capable of achieving until you try to achieve it”.

“If you fall 10 times, know that you are perfectly capable of standing up 11 times”.

“A test does not describe you as a person. A test score is simply a happening, not a person”.

“Succeeding at school does not mean never making mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. That’s how we learn and grow. It’s avoiding making the same mistake that gets you closer to your goals”.

Get Motivated to Help Your Students with TIMESAVERS for TEACHERS

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