When I stay on top of: taking anecdotal notes, keeping my grade book updated, collecting work samples, and having my students complete regular self reflections, I want to kiss myself during report card comment writing. It makes it SO much easier because I already have everything I need gathered. All that’s left to do is to wordsmith!

Turn Anecdotal Notes Into Report Card Comments

Keeping my teacher binder full of anecdotal notes is my favourite way to help myself for when it’s time to write a report card comment for each of my kiddos. I take notes in all core subjects, when students are working with partners or in groups, during projects, about their behaviour, about student leadership…

Basically, I take notes on all of the things!

When I sit down to write each students’ report card comment, I simply open to the students’ tab in my binder and wordsmith my notes to ensure they sound professional. It’s as easy as that! 

The trick is staying on top of note taking. This year, I found a system I love. I drag my teacher binder around everywhere I go. My notes in the binder will cut my report card writing time in half because everything is there for me.

To learn more about my Teacher Notes Binder, check out my blog post!

Keep Your Grade Book Updated

I love using my electronic grade book in Google Sheets to keep all of my grades and checklists at my finger tips. This way, I can easily access everything from work and home. In my grade book, I record assessment results and checklists throughout each unit. This helps me reflect on the growth of each student when writing each report card comment.

Collect Work Samples

Quickly flipping through a student’s work sample helps me to write their report card comment. It allows me to get a sense of their strengths and weaknesses in each subject, their effort level, areas of improvement, etc.

Pictures of samples saved electronically on a platform like Seesaw, Google Classroom, Class Dojo, etc. make samples very easy to access without having to flip through stacks of papers.

Another alternative is to have a portfolio set up for each child so that you can pull the portfolio to flip through for work samples. Pulling observations from these samples make report card comment writing a breeze.

Turn Students Self Reflections Into Report Card Comments

I love having students complete self reflections for their behaviour and for all major projects we complete. It’s a great springboard for report card comments as it can show how much effort students are putting into their work and into making good choices. It also shows if students feel they are doing well in class (whether they are or aren’t).

Want More Help?

Grab the *free* complete report card writing guide.

It includes report card comment examples, sample report card writing schedules, quick tips, and 135 comment sentences frames you can use right away.