Dr. Wendy Kofoed discusses plain language reporting and providing concise summaries of student progress in written reports that focus on the purpose, audience, and student. She provides examples of plain language comments for reports that use everyday language for families of English language learners. Feedback from parents emphasizes using positive, encouraging, and honest language to inform parents about student progress and next steps for learning, while also acknowledging any struggles but focusing on gains made with support. Dr. Kofoed provides resources on her website for plain language report examples.

1. Plain Language Reporting
Dr Wendy Kofoed principal@newmarket.school.nz
Building strong learning-focused partnerships with students, parents and whanau

3. Written Reporting – What a journey
• Focus on the purpose
• Focus on the audience
• Focus on the student

4. Written Reports
• Huge variety of formats
• Trends
• We all want to report well

5. “In maths he keeps
himself entertained
with personal items.”
“She is able to use locomotive
and non-locomotive
movements when dancing to
music. She can sing
accurately. She is able to play
an ostinato in a class setting.”
“While your child has
improved his behaviour in the
playground, he does need
reminding to manage his
physical self.”
He uses the strategies
of chunking, knowledge
of blends and
context clues to work
out unknown words. His
inference is improving.”
?

6. Attempting to walk the talk…
Feedback from parents
- more effort needed!
Plain Language Reports

7. Examples

8. Wendy‟s „work in progress‟ written reporting plain language comment examples can be found on
Assessment Online website: http://assessment.tki.org.nz/Reporting-to-parents-families-and-whanau
Students
•Use everyday language – especially for families of students who are English
language learners.”
•“Keep the information in the written reports positive, encouraging, and honest –
always give the next steps to help the child’s learning.”
•“It is good to put parents at ease through the language used in the written reports
– if their child is struggling, they will want to know what help is needed. Also, be
honest with parents and write about any problems.”
•“Although it might be stated that the child is below expectation in the written
report – I like how the teacher has gone on to mention the positive gains made with
home support and the teacher’s work, as this is encouraging.”
Resources
Parents