Self-Written Comments and Grades: A Win-Win

When I started teaching back in 1995, the semester or term report was a handwritten affair, replaced in 1998 by a typed collection of pages, then by the comment banks of the early 2000s (which we still had to write) and today by the artificial intelligence (AI) supported statements based on the record of student work churned out by whatever information management system the school has chosen to share planning, track students progress, and save teachers time. 

Report season becomes a crunch time for teachers, especially those specialists who work across a school and can easily see 120+ students a week. During this time the quality of their lesson preparation and marking may drop, as they write comments for many students or many subjects or skill areas.

I have seen teachers struggle to complete reports on time, both relatively new teachers and more experienced teachers with other responsibilities, holding up timelines and making work for their colleagues. I have seen teachers take time off sick during reporting to get the job done, and have had to manage difficult conversations about the difference between some teachers' one liners and other teachers' essays.

On the student side over the years, I have had to respond to them and their parents being surprised by their reports and grades, to students falling out with teachers over what they have written, and to teachers who have upset students by missing something important to the students that they did not notice or forgot to mention. 

Reporting can be fraught with difficulties, inconsistencies, and unintended consequences, but framed well, self-written reports cause learning and can mitigate all of the above.

The purpose of the report, the aims of the course, and the assessment objectives.

Reports should provide an acknowledgement of a student’s approach to learning in the subject area and give meaningful feedback that moves their learning forwards. Done well, reporting also helps to build the relationship between school and home by starting a conversation that continues face-to-face during a conference. Reports also serve as required documentation in many school systems, recording the outcomes of the progress made each semester by the student and the teacher working together, giving an account of the impact school is having.

All reports are written within the context of a course, a program of study, and a set of learning objectives against which a student will be measured. Reports are also an opportunity to check in and recalibrate with reference to the objectives and the criteria for success. By having the students review these objectives and reflect on their progress against them, they are doing the work of seeing themselves as a learner and putting their own progress into words that they and others can talk about. This is giving them the voice they need for an authentic conversation about the work they have done and what they need to do next to grow.

The single lesson report writing workshop.

The reporting workshop requires a single lesson to be set aside about three weeks before the report writing deadline. The activity is framed as a guided reflection, starting with a review of the course aims and assessment objectives.

The first 20 minutes of the lesson is used to read through the aims and objectives together, to check for shared understanding and to think about the descriptors we might use when measuring our progress against them. 

Next we look at the form and structure of the report: third person, strengths, areas for development, and what to do next to improve. I share an example of a report from a few years ago that I asked the student if I could use in future to help others write better reports (at the time it blew me away with its clarity, honesty, and direction).

I then give the students the next 15 minutes to draft their own report and give themselves an A-E letter grade for the semester. When they think they are done, they share the draft with me and we have a conversation about it. In a way that is at once constructive and honest, accountability moves towards the students as learners receiving their own reflective feedback, rather than the third-party feedback of their teacher. It gives students the opportunity to share their own message with parents, guardians and teachers about their strengths, areas for development, and what they intend to do next to improve.

With these reports, the students are also telling me what they value, what they perceive their strengths to be, and where they need to put their effort to grow. If I see something that they don't, I share it with them when I read the report and then suggest they include it in the final edit, which they do, and they are happy that I notice something they didn't. As for their grades, I think that one in 10 need to ask whether they really think that's the grade level they are working at, and they acknowledge that, all things considered, it probably isn't; the grade inflation with students self reporting is almost zero.

I close the workshop by sharing something about the effect of self reported grades (Hattie) and self reporting (Wiliam) on learning, and the impact of metacognitive strategies (Hattie) on achievement. The students email me their reports and grades which I put into our online reporting system with the promise that I will only improve spelling and grammar and, if there is something that I still don’t agree with, we will edit it together.

Conclusion

With this approach over the last three years I have been surprised how, again and again, the students write better reports than I would have done. They tell me what matters to them, I learn more about the support they need from me, and we are all happier. They participated in their own metacognitive development and I got a full class of reports written in 40 minutes; everybody wins.

I have shared this approach to writing reports with my colleagues in our staff meetings and encouraged them to try. I realize that the students may become a little jaded if everyone took this approach, "not another self-reporting reflection!", but something else that surprises me, given how willing some seem to have AI write their reports, is how few people try it… put this in your calendar and try it next semester!