School report been copied

bonty44

I'd feel gutted if I thought the children or parents were disappointed with the reports I write.
I'd also be pretty upset if I felt they were comparing them with other parents as I feel what I write is personal to that child; it may well be that a large number of the class have made 'good progress' and 'contribute well' - how many different ways can you rephrase that before waffling?
I know there are lots of teachers out there who put in an inordinate amount of time writing reports on children.
I wonder how many replies a positive thread on teachers/reports would get if I started one?? Might well do that, but had best go, it's nearly time for me to start lesson planning for tomorrow.

Oh, by the way, to some of those parents who have the time to 'nitpick' reports and question why teachers dare leave school on the bell, etc., etc., etc., can you please reiterate with your children that it's really important for them to take care with their spelling in written work / to be polite when they talk to their teacher or need a further explanation and not just grunt 'whaaaat?' / to listen when other people are speaking / to pick their bits of paper off the floor / to stick their work into their books using a glue-stick and not just shove it in between a couple of random pages / to make sure they bring the correct equipment with them to lessons so that we don't have to spend ten minutes making sure everyone's got a pencil, pen, ruler, rubber, etc., before we can even start our work/ to do homework when it is set and actually hand it in on the day it's due ... etc. THANKS

dizziblonde

iwanttosave wrote: »

Cut and shut job on my sons school report as well , it was word for word the same as another child who is, due to disabilities, the bottom of the class academically. Now we're talking about primary school here, in a class of less than 30, considering we only had 5 minute slots for the parents evening I would have thought some effort would have at least gone into writing that, any adept typist could do my sons whole class in an evening.

I'm only 25, but when I was in school all my reports were handwritten and personal, both in primary and secondary school.

One thing I've noticed as well, they use a big font on the reports now, well in the schools near me, suppose it makes it look like a lot of work has gone into it.

My reports start off at 12 point and get smaller and smaller as I try to cram more information into the silly-sized text boxes allowed (other colleagues do whack theirs up to 14 point which is cheating in my eyes!).

As for handwriting reports - I'm very good at written English (not always on forums where I tend to type lazily - don't we all), but I've always struggled a fair bit handwriting things at great length - I type much more proficiently than I handwrite. If I had to handwrite everything on reports I'd be on writing them from September as every error would mean starting from the beginning again. While I can, and do where required, express things in handwritten form - I'm one of those people who'd much rather word process.... lots of schools seem to be switching to systems where the reports get emailed to the head (who does then sit and read them all) rather than photocopying endless draft versions - most heads will proof read, I always print and proof read my own reports and then re-read them again the following day because I know that after I've been looking at a document for any length of time I start not seeing silly typos, stuff creeps through.

Sadly a lot of particularly older teachers aren't adept typists like myself - in the past I've helped colleagues out by typing up comments from them when the computer system's decided to eat their last hour's finger pecking at the keyboard - it's just too painful watching the slow typing not to offer!!!

I'm willing to bet a lot of the identikit reports are those report writing software packages doing the rounds - I hate them, used to have to use one for writing IEPs and I spent more time clicking through options to find the target that said what I was looking for than I would have done just typing it in in the first place... it's the big criticism of them, that they lead to identical reports - more noticeable if you've got siblings in the class or school or if you compare notes with other parents' reports... when I had twins in the class I tried very hard to make their reports distinctive (hard when they were even similar ability!) - so although the "this year in History Johnny has looked at blah blah blah" part was the same - how they'd worked in subjects and their future targets were slightly different (as much as they can be when they're going into the same class, doing the same subjects, at a similar ability level the next year!).

Doesn't take much to at least make the final paragraph, Literacy and Numeracy completely child specific really unless your head's paid for one of these wonder packages and insists you use it at every available opportunity (they tend to get a bit like that sometimes heads).

In one of my secondary school reports there were 10 different spellings of my name - I've got a slightly unusual (but still commonly accepted) spelling of my first name and just a generally tricky surname - but still... I think I wrote a sarcy comment in the "what I think about my report" box for the return slip!

teacherandmum

i have a class of 27 year 1 and 2 and find some comments on here unbelievable. i spent 3 days in the may half term writing my reports - from sc ratch - whilst paying nursery fees for my daughter(?no doubt someone will have an opinion on this!). and many evenings on top of that too.
i always count up the hours i spend on reports and this year it was 55 hours. about 2 hours a report. in that time i've filled all curriculum boxes, a pse box and a general comments box. our reports are 4 sides A4 each.
when re-reading reports mine do seem very similar. if you've taught the same things to each child then they are going to be similar. Also i know i have a particular turn of phrase and you do get in a rut when wanting to say the same thing about 2 children i.e. X can recognise, read and write numbers to 20. you're not telling me that i should write When recognising, reading and writing numbers, X is most confident with numbers to 20 on someone elses and then keep finding new ways to write the same thing on each report.

;)if i've made spelling mistakes, don't worry, i teach infants and we just colour all day and play in the sand:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

whitfreak

I thought the copy+paste nature of school reports these days is because teachers arn't allowed to be negative about any of their pupils anymore. And as such are restricted approved phrases. But judging by the thread it seems like I am wrong.

daily_2

teacherandmum wrote: »

;)if i've made spelling mistakes, don't worry, i teach infants and we just colour all day and play in the sand:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

i fink you might like Firefox, it has a built-in spellcheecker.

pavlovs_dog

i think the biggest irony of the (many) teacher bashing threads is that the first people to moan about the decline in standards if we tried even just some of the many evils that we are accused of would be the very people moaning about how teachers have it easy.

princesslaura

I try to make my reports as individual as I can but with a class of over 35 and reports that are 8 pages long there were some subjects that were the same for children of similar ability.

Idiophreak

blackcoffee wrote: »

yet we dont gets 6 weeks in France every summer, 2 weeks in florida at Easter, 2 weeks break at christmas and 2 * half terms, as my dh doesnt get that much annual leave.

LMFAO...you really don't have the foggiest what you're talking about, do you?

Let's forget, for a moment, that my gf will spend a good 2/3 of each holiday (whether one week or 6) catching up from the previous term and preparing for the next one and assume she actually has all of her holidays to herself...

One simple question...Do you actually know what teachers earn?

If you can make that figure into living PLUS 6 weeks in France and 2 weeks in Florida *peak season* each year, you must be a forking alchemist.

galvanizersbaby

teacherandmum wrote: »

i have a class of 27 year 1 and 2 and find some comments on here unbelievable. i spent 3 days in the may half term writing my reports - from sc ratch - whilst paying nursery fees for my daughter(?no doubt someone will have an opinion on this!). and many evenings on top of that too.
i always count up the hours i spend on reports and this year it was 55 hours. about 2 hours a report. in that time i've filled all curriculum boxes, a pse box and a general comments box. our reports are 4 sides A4 each.
when re-reading reports mine do seem very similar. if you've taught the same things to each child then they are going to be similar. Also i know i have a particular turn of phrase and you do get in a rut when wanting to say the same thing about 2 children i.e. X can recognise, read and write numbers to 20. you're not telling me that i should write When recognising, reading and writing numbers, X is most confident with numbers to 20 on someone elses and then keep finding new ways to write the same thing on each report.

;)if i've made spelling mistakes, don't worry, i teach infants and we just colour all day and play in the sand:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Why would someone have an opinion? because you have to pay childcare fees when you are working or because you use a nursery for your daughter's childcare?

My children are reception class and Year 1 and I recieved their school reports today.
They were far more detailed and personal than I expected and clearly a lot of work had gone in to them but it must be near enough impossible not to use the same sort of phrases as you say when writing many reports.

racheyg

1. Of course some of it is copied and pasted, if it is relevant. Everyone in business does this all of the time (letters etc). As long as it is relevant to your child, what's the problem?

2. However, it IS part of a teacher's job and irrespective of whether it has to be done in the holidays or not, that's irrelevant. It's about time management - the same as any job. I think teachers have a hard job, but so do I.

3. My child is in clubs too during my working hours. If I have extra work to do outside of my working hours then she goes to club as well, that's also normal.

4. There shouldn't really be anything surprising on a report, it's just a summary of the term's activities. If you feel you need personal attention, make an appointment with the teacher, who I would presume is only too happy to see a parent who cares.

5. Why do parents compare reports anyway?