Administrative Procedure 361: Communicating Student Achievement - Appendix C
Effective Communication Practices
An effective reporting document:
- Promotes a student’s feelings of success and positive self-worth;
- Encourages further student learning;
- Promotes home-school communication;
- Provides a context for judgments;
- Is clearly understood by students and parents;
- Provides information on student achievement and growth;
- Is aligned to provincial curriculum standards;
- Tells what individual students know and can do;
- Ensures that the mark awarded is an accurate and current reflection of student learning;
- Factors out elements not related to the curriculum, or not reflective of the student’s typical achievement level; and
- Acknowledges actions that need to be taken by partners in learning—students, parents and teachers.
An effective conference:
- Includes the students as an active participant;
- Uses student products to demonstrate achievement and growth;
- Focuses clearly on individual student learning and includes specific strategies for improvement;
- Expands upon the information provided in the report card;
- Engages all participants in discussing achievement and setting goals;
- Includes a discussion of the successes and difficulties the student is experiencing;
- Provides an opportunity for open and relevant sharing of information between participants;
- Establishes an atmosphere in which everyone feels welcome to participate;
- Provides information about curriculum;
- Includes an action plan that is supportive of student learning; and
- Ends on a positive note.
An effective portfolio:
- Is a planned and organized collection of student work;
- Tells detailed stories about a variety of student outcomes that would be otherwise difficult to document;
- Includes self-reflections that describe the student as both a learner and an individual;
- Serves as a guide for future learning by illustrating a student’s present level of achievement;
- Includes a selection of items that are representative of curriculum outcomes and what the student knows and can do;
- Includes the criteria against which the student work was judged;
- Supports the assessment, evaluation and communication of student learning; and
- Documents learning in a variety of ways—process, product, growth and achievement.
(A Framework for Communicating Student Learning, Alberta Assessment Consortium, June 1999)