Ages 10 to 12: Grades four, five, and six
Projects
These take on greater significance. Students are assessed on their ability to work independently or in a group on a project with a specific deadline for completion.
Journals
Students are encouraged to express their ideas and feelings, ask questions, and respond to open-ended questions in their own journal of learning. Their classroom teacher gains insight into the students' learning processes, as well as their social and personal growth and intellectual development.
Tests and quizzes
Teacher-developed quizzes and tests assess what students have learned throughout each unit of study in the curriculum. The results in each subject area contribute to the year-end marks.
Observation, performance and portfolios
These continue to be important parts of the teacher's evaluation.
Reading a report card
The results of these varied evaluations appear on a report card issued at the end of each term. Recent trends in report cards indicate that ministries of education are listening to and acting on parent complaints that report cards had become difficult to understand and were filled with education jargon. Most boards issue report cards that use levels of grading: A, B, C, and D or 1, 2, 3, and 4. Be sure you understand what the levels mean.
What's in a child's report card shouldn't come as a surprise to her parents. If she had been having serious difficulty with mathematics or the language arts, the teacher should have contacted you as soon as she became aware of the problem. However, on a report card, teachers do avoid being blunt in what they write, and tend to use general comments.
Understanding what the teacher means
A teacher might write "Greater attention in class would bring improved results," which probably means that your child is easily distracted, spends too much time talking to other kids, or doesn't listen.
Teachers are careful to use standard phrases since all comments appear on a child's Student Record Card (SRC) which follows her throughout her school years in any province or from province to province. Also, teachers do not want to arouse emotional responses from parents that will not help the child improve her performance.
Page 2 of 3 – Find out the types of questions you should ask your child's teacher on page 3.
