Writing Reports.

This document gives comprehensive advice on writing reports to parents. It is full of ideas and examples, set in an MYP and DP context.

The advice is designed to be relevant for all IB schools within each programme but also be edited to fit the context of your school. The document deals with my school’s design of mid-term reports consisting of summary comments for the whole class and end of term reports focusing on individualised comments for every student: if your school follows a different report design the document can easily be adapted to fit it.

It is important to remember that teachers will come from a range of countries and schools that will have different expectations on report writing. New staff may need guidance on what should and should not be included in them and as a coordinator it is important to reinforce that reports are one of the main ways we have of communicating with parents and it is vital that they give accurate information on the strengths and progress the student has made, as well as clear guidance and targets for the future. This document gives clear guidelines on the expectations of writing reports at our school and is shown at staff meetings and in one to one meetings with staff who need further support. Teachers are put into pairs to check each other`s reports for spelling, grammar or content issues before they are sent to me to read through.

The document focuses on the following areas of writing reports:

1. The aim of writing reports.
2. Frequency of reports.
3. Types of reports.
4. Grading reports.
5. Information included in the report comments.
6. Advice for good report writing.
   • Know your students.
   • Keep the structure of your reports simple.
   • Focus on each student as an individual.
   • Be specific and provide detail (praise, difficulties faced by students, providing targets, approaches to learning.
   • Negative comments.
   • Accuracy.
   • Teacher language.
   • Comparing students.
   • Highlight the school’s / International Baccalaureate’s values.

7. Checking Report Comments.
8. Example report comments.
9. Comment bank.
   • A general paragraph with gaps in to add individual comments.
   • Sets of sentences based on different topics in the report.
   • Three example reports based on good, satisfactory and poor performance.
10. References.