You have received the end-of-year report from your child's school. Here's an opportunity to discuss it with them and reflect on the year. This video gives the 3 areas you should discuss.
TRANSCRIPT
Good morning! This is Jason Ursino from Learning Space, and I'm driving to school.
Today I’m going to be talking about the three things to discuss with your son or daughter when they receive their report card at the end of the year. So it's the end of the year and you have just received their report for the end of the year. In high school, it's various subjects. In primary school, they have the various subjects but from the same teacher, and you want to sit down and talk to your son or daughter about the end of the year report card. So what are the three things to talk about?
The first one is to talk about what they did well in.
So the good things. Did they do well in terms of marks in a particular subject? Do the comments reflect that they have worked well in a particular classroom? Does it show that they have completed all their work? So sometimes we forget to celebrate the good things. So it is important that you do that to show your son or daughter that it is important that they have done well in some aspects. So celebrating the good things is an important one.
The second thing is the improvements.
So one good technique is to have an older report card with you. So not just the report card that you're looking at, but also have a look at the old report card. So it could be the mid-year report, or could be the previous year report and have a look for the improvements. Sometimes we get the temptation to compare our son or daughter to our other children for what our expectations should be. But what we need to remember is we should be looking at growth, we should be comparing them to themselves from previous report cards. So have a look for improvement, because that, there, is the biggest celebration. If they didn't do so well in a particular subject, however, you have seen a significant improvement from the previous card, that's actually something to be happy about because improvement is pretty much what you want from your children while they're progressing through school. So what you are encouraging there is you are encouraging your son or daughter that you appreciate them improving and trying hard, rather than just saying this is the benchmark, make sure you get that. It's important to have high expectations, but we want to celebrate the growth.
And the third thing is to talk about what needs to be improved.
So the bad things. Sometimes this can be a difficult conversation, most of the time, it is something that you should expect, there shouldn't be too many surprises when it comes to report cards. So if you see something that you're not happy about, it's not improved from a previous report card and it's something that needs to be addressed, it is important to have that difficult conversation with your son or daughter. Not to be angry at them, but to just discuss and say, “hey, look, what I really want you to do is, I really want you to improve here so talk to me about what we can do”. “Are you not gelling with a teacher at school?” “Do you not understand the content?” “Do you need some tutoring?” Okay, so those important conversations need to be had so that you know what to do to improve the results for your son or daughter. If you get angry at them or you go off at them, when you say something bad, it's not going to be a pleasant conversation. So a serious conversation. If it's a son, a male, then side by side so driving in the car with him or going for a walk with him and having a discussion about it. If it's a daughter, a female student, probably have something that they enjoy, like a hot chocolate, and sit down with him and just talk to him about it and say, “hey, what can we do to improve?”
So they're the three things to talk about when you get your son or daughter's end of year report card. The first one is the good things, make sure you celebrate the good things. The second thing is the improvement. Remember, the improvement is probably the most important thing and the most important thing that you can celebrate. And finally, the things that need to be improved, the difficult conversation.
If you liked my videos, there are more of them and learningspace.net.au/drivingtoschool and have a good day.