What does the weekly evaluation sheet look like?

Note: These are NOT your child’s academic grades for the subject areas (math, reading, etc.).  These grades reflect behavior and whether homework and classwork is being completed and turned in on time- NOT whether it is correct or if your child has mastered the information taught.  Please look for mid-term progress reports and report cards for updates on your child’s academic progress.

How long do weekly evals take to fill out?

Ten to thirty minutes for the whole class, depending on how much you want to write.  I usually write more at the beginning of the year, but by the third quarter, I’ve pretty much made all the complaints and compliments I’m going to make for a child and pare it down more.  If I see a child accomplish something remarkable during the week, such as writing an insightful journal entry or mastering a math concept they’ve been struggling with, I’ll comment on it on the eval right away before I forget.  It saves a lot of time at the end of the week when I  add information in throughout the week as things happen, and provides parents with more specific feedback.

What if the parents don’t sign them?

Make a consequence for the child.  There are no excuses about “I told my mom and she said she’d do it later” or “My dad forgot”- it is the child’s behavior, the child’s work habits, and the child’s responsibility to deliver the paper to their parents.   The child is 100% responsible for getting it signed.  Believe it or not, I have used weekly evals with over 120 children, including those in the inner city, and never had more than an occasional problem with parents not signing.

What if there is no responsible parent in the home?

Parents don’t have to punish or reward based on weekly evaluation results, although many of them do.  All that's required is a signature.  I tell my students there is absolutely no reason they can’t get someone in their household’s attention for five seconds to sign the eval- they’ve got all Friday night, all day Saturday, all Saturday night, all day Sunday, all Sunday night, and Monday morning.  If they never encounter a grown-up in all that time, there's a much more serious problem than not getting an evaluation signed. When I phrase this that way, the child suddenly seems to remember a family member or neighbor being around most of the time. In those type of unstable households, I have allowed Grandma or Grandpa or an aunt or uncle to sign.  In one case, a nineteen-year-old sister signed more often than the mother, but since the sister was responsible for disciplining the child, she actually took the role of signing the eval quite seriously.  You can tell the students to have the person at home who is responsible for them sign.   (Talk to previous teachers to find out who that person is when the child’s files and own answers don’t quite complete the story for you).    As teachers we are held accountable for every part of our students’ development, but many times parents are allowed to take absolutely no responsibility for their children’s education because we tiptoe around them and allow them to be negligent.  Reading one sentence from their child’s teacher and signing off it once a week is NOT too much to ask of a parent.  Period.  If I ever encountered a household that couldn’t meet that requirement, I would probably rely on other adults in the school to help, as explained below.

7/30/06: Tiffany, a 4th grade teacher in Kentucky, emailed to share this fantastic idea: "For teachers who work with very challenging populations.  When I knew a certain student's family situation, and knew that they would not get their agenda signed nightly, I paired them up with another adult in the building.  Each morning, they would show that adult their completed homework, that they had written down their assignments, and behavior grade. This allowed them to feel included even though their parents didn't sign their agenda."

Are there any rewards or consequences tied in to weekly evaluation grades?

Some years I do something each Friday afternoon called A/B reward or Fun Friday.  Any child who had gotten all A’s and B’s on his or her weekly evaluation can participate.  The others complete practice work at their seats.   A/B reward was usually a thirty-minute educational movie, Reading Rainbow or Magic School Bus or something similar, but sometimes I let the kids bring in movies which we watched a half an hour of each week.   Sometimes I gave them free time, or did an art project, but I preferred the movie so that I could get things wrapped up in the classroom and prepare for the following week.  It was also common to hear the kids talk about rewards their parents have tied in to the system- they can go to skating this weekend if they get A's and B's, etc.

In  some schools (or with some classes), I just can't justify Fun Fridays.  In one inner city school, we were under tremendous pressure to perform on standardized tests, and my kids went to a tremendous amount of special classes.  This resulted in more planning and professional development time for me but also put a real crunch of the amount of time I had for instruction.  I personally have kids for 5 hours a day in most schools, but in that one, my student contact time was about 4 hours.  I tried doing five minutes at the end of the day, but parents picked up their kids at this school and I didn't like for them to see the kids playing around everytime they came to the classroom.   My assistant principal said 10 minutes of waster time during a school day equals 15 DAYS a year of lost instructional opportunities.  *Sigh*.  I still love Fun Fridays (and kids work hard for them, too!), but they are not always the best choice for me and my kids.

So, in my inner city school, there were no rewards or punishments except what the parents doled out.  The vast majority of my parents did NOT play when it came to discipline, so I felt pretty confident that bringing home an "F" in social skills would be enough of a consequence.  I rewarded all A/A students with a Student of the Week certificate, an idea I got from another teacher at the school, Ms. Bethel.  She had all the kids who got the award stand up and come to the front of the room, and the others clapped and cheered and congratulated them.  Then the ones who didn't get the award stood up and the ones who did get it cheered, "Keep trying!".

Can weekly evals work with individual behavior modification plans?

Yes!  One year, I had a child whose behavior was so inconsistent that he was driving his family and I both crazy- he’d get and A in social skills for three weeks, then an F, for no obvious reason.  I met with his parents  and we signed a behavior contract.  It basically said that the child was responsible for bringing home what he came to term his ‘checkbook’- a leftover agenda book the school used with the upper grade students.  I would record how many checks he had each day and what they were for, and he would bring it home for his parents to sign.   If he had 2 or fewer checks for the day, he was allowed to have his normal TV and GameBoy privileges.  If he had more than 2 checks, he was not allowed to watch or play with either for the entire evening.   Because he was allowed to get up to 2 checks a day (which would be 10, a D, by the end of the week), he would only have his privileges revoked over the weekend if he had more than 10 checks.  The letter grades were given only for my grading records (social skills grades were recorded on report cards) but were not to affect his A/B reward or privileges at home.  Later in the year, he was only allowed to have 1 check per day and was put back on the regular grading system with the rest of the class.  This method did not cure his misbehavior- I’m not sure anything would have- but it certainly increased the communication between home and school, provided immediate consequences and rewards for him since waiting until Friday was ineffective, and provided solid documentation of his behavior for his doctor, the special education coordinator, and my own records.   It was also very little work for me, since the child was responsible for giving me the book each day- if he forgot, he automatically lost privileges at home and recess at school.   He did an excellent job of remembering and really thought hard about his actions each day because of the high level of accountability.  You can read more about developing individual behavior modification on the Behavior Plans page.