Daily Report Card

April 20, 2007 at 2:14 pm | Posted in behavior, education, elementary, inner city, third grade | 1 Comment

I find that daily report cards are invaluable tool of communication with parents and a great aid to help students monitor their own behavior.

Here’s how I do it.  I’d like to hear more examples of effective use of daily report cards!

• Determine first if the student really needs a daily report card or a different behavior management plan.
• Conference with the student and the parents, state the situation, explain the daily report cards clearly, state the measurable goals of the daily report cards, state teacher’s role, parents’ roles, and student’s role.
• Limit daily report cards to four explicit, measurable objectives.  Don’t be general, as that sets students up for failure.  If student has difficulty starting work immediately, then one objective may be, “I began my work within two minutes of the teacher telling the class to begin.”
• Give student a score for each objective, a happy face, a medium face, and an unhappy face is how I do it.
•   Be consistent in sending home daily report cards.  Do not skip any days!
• Meet with student every once in awhile to discuss their progress.
• A s student shows improvement, meet with student and parents to adjust objectives or possibly to transition student out of daily report cards.

Usually, I would have four or five students who need daily report cards.  These are students who need more than the regular classroom management rules and consequences.  Everyone else works well with the regular classroom management plan.  This year I transitioned one student out of the daily report card.  I offered the parent of another student the possibility of transitioning her son out, but she requested that he continues the daily report card.  So we did, but we adjusted his behavior objectives.

I ‘ll post examples of my daily report cards in another post.

Now, how do you do daily report cards?  Do you do daily report cards?  What’s your classroom management plan like?