Report Cards

Do schools still give "report cards?"

When I first started homeschooling I was so excited about all the kids had done.  At the end of the year I remembered that I received a "report card" at the end of the year.  Students' grades were on them and teachers would usually comment about the the student's performance, personality, attitude, diligence, handwriting ability, standing-in-line skills.   Okay, maybe I got a little carried away there.

I didn't want to grade my kindergartener on those things.  I wanted him to know how much he accomplished that year (and how much I accomplished- remember, "It's all about me!").

It's been said the the great leader-orator Winston Churchill performed terribly in school and hated tests.  "Tests" he said, always tried to determine how much students didn't know.  He wanted someone to ask him what he did know about a subject.  That was the true test.

Likewise, I wanted my students to know what they did, learned, accomplished.  So, I started writing "Yearly Accomplishments."

What I do is list every subject they had.  Then I may give the text they used and possibly their grade for the year (this has come in handy when I needed to refer back and couldn't remember everything).  I add in some/all the books they read for that class or books I read to them.  I often ask them what their favorite book and favorite subject was that year. 

I keep it positive.

Sometimes it's tricky to put a positive spin on things, but that's my goal.  I try to end the document with something special about each child.  Something about his/her sports team or an extracurricular activity (ie: Eagle Scout award). 

I put them in a Word document and send them in an email to myself so that I (hopefully) always have a virtual copy!  I print them and put a nice card stock cover with a title on the front.

Usually we send a copy to close relatives.

Do you have an end of the school year tradition?  What do you think about this?  What do public schools do?

For some brief examples read below:

First Grade Partial Sample:

Bible:  *Jane read through the bible almost two times this year.  Before Christmas we read through the Book of Revelation with all the kids.  Our history reading during the spring correlated with the Bible:  we were studying the same time period during Bible and History.

Reading:  Jane really worked hard learning to read this year.  She completed through lesson 162 of The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading.  She is reading sentences like, “I warn you that on a warm day you may see a swarm of bugs” and “The Duke of York and one of his lords take a short trip on a ship”.   She will continue reading lessons and reading on her own during the summer.  She is enrolled in the summer reading program at the local library.

Literature:  The read-a-loud books that Jane listened to this year are The 20th Century Children's Book Treasury, Aunt Chip and the Great Triple Creek Dam Affair, Children of the Dragon: Selected Tales from Vietnam, The Empty Pot, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, One Grain of Rice, Peacebound Trains, Sitti's Secrets, Brave Cloelia, God Around Us, King Midas and the Golden Touch, Rain Player, The Story of Little Babaji, Tutankhamen's Gift, Excerpts from Usborne Aesop's Fables, and The Very First Christians.

 Third Grade Partial Sample:

 Extracurricular activities:  John played soccer in the fall and spring and he also played baseball in the spring.  He earned his Bear rank in cub Scouts.

Fifth Grade Partial Sample:  

Bible:  Jill read through the bible almost two times this year.  Before Christmas we read through the Book of Revelation with all the kids.  Our history reading during the spring correlated with the Bible:  we were studying the same time period during Bible and History.

Math:  Jill used Math-U-See Epsilon this year and she learned all about fractions.  She is a whiz at doing “The Rule of Four” for adding, subtracting and dividing fractions!

History:  In the first semester Jill learned about the US history from the 1950’s to the current time.  During the second semester she studied ancient history from the beginning of time to the fall of Rome (A.D. 476).   A highlight was making paper mache elephants when we studied Hannibal and ancient Rome.  "X" loved reading ancient Greek myths.

(*I changed the childrens' names.)