Teachers across the province are preparing and writing their term one report cards.
While time consuming to write, report card comments are a way to communicate with children and families about the children as learners. I always struggle with how I let them know that I see them as capable and intelligent people, even when their grades are not what they expect. It’s taken me awhile to find the way that I feel celebrates students as mathematicians and learners in the comment section. For me, the best way to express my ideas about students is through commenting on the mathematical processes. The front matter of the mathematics curriculum states:
“The mathematical processes cannot be separated from the knowledge, concepts, and skills that students acquire throughout the year. All students problem solve, communicate, reason, reflect, and so on, as they develop the knowledge, the understanding of mathematical concepts, and the skills required in all the strands in every grade.”
If you aren’t yet familiar with the processes, they include:
- problem solving
- reasoning and proving
- reflecting
- connecting
- communicating
- representing
- selecting tools and strategies
To further support my thinking, I opened the Growing Success: The Mathematics Addendum, Grades 1 to 8, 2020 which states:
“…describe significant strengths demonstrated by the student and identify next steps for improvement; they may also describe growth in learning. When appropriate, teachers may make reference to particular strands in their comments.”
This was what I wanted! I wanted my comments to reflect what I knew about students and how I saw them as learners each day. It shifted what I was looking for in the classroom to being asset-based thinking – what were students doing and learning, their strengths and how could I use that information to build on their experiences in mathematics.
I thought about what I noticed happening in the lessons for the students and came up with ways to express what I thought was important for them to read about themselves. For example,
*Name* is gaining confidence in their use of representations in mathematics. They are comfortable using number lines to express understanding of equations and show their work when solving problems. They were also able to model new thinking when working with fractions this term using pictures and diagrams, such as rectangles and squares divided into equal parts to model parts of a whole.
For other students, I wanted to highlight their strategies and decided to comment on their participation in sharing ideas in class. For example,
During whole class discussions in math class, *name* was an active participant. They enjoyed sharing their estimation strategies, such as rounding numbers, to provide reasons for their estimations. For example, when working with larger number expressions, such as 28 x 2, *name* would estimate 60 and justify that 30 x 2 was a close friendly expression to use.
Some students excelled in building connections between strands. I wrote comments that demonstrated how they saw connections in mathematics and not just each strand as a singular stand alone. An example of these comments are:
*Name* looks for connections between mathematics strands to make sense of new concepts. They recognize the relationship between geometry and measurement, especially when exploring perimeter. *Name* used an understanding of the sides of squares and triangles to explain the perimeter as being the distance around an object. They also extended this understanding to measuring distance around a city block and could explain why metres would be a more accurate unit of measurement than centimetres.
Of course, all teachers have their own style and flair for report card writing. You are entitled and encouraged to use your own professional judgement about how to best communicate with families and students about learning. These examples are not the only way to approach math comments, but the process of thinking about what I wanted to say and looking into the curriculum and Growing Success Addendum helped me to frame my own thinking and understanding about reporting in math.





