Creating COMMENT BANKS

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1 Creating COMMENT BANKS This HelpCard is to support you in creating and sharing COMMENT BANKS To help you write Annual Reports more quickly, you can borrow and write COMMENT BANKS to add to several pupil reports. The Annual Report Writer caters for EYFS and Year 1 to 6 reports in your school. There are two separate report formats and each has their separate comment bank. If you are writing reports for children in Year 1 to Year 6, please click on and refer to all the Y1-Y6 links. If you are writing EYFS Reports, please click on and refer to all the EYFS links. You can create your COMMENT BANK by clicking on the Create and edit your COMMENT BANK link in the Annual Report Writer menu. Your link may not be at number 4. This HelpCard Section 1: The Report Writing Process Section 2: What is a COMMENT BANK? Section 3: How to create your own COMMENT BANK Section 4: Saving and searching COMMENT BANKS Section 5: Using the COMMENT BANK Summary of the features you will be able to use when writing your reports: Create and share a Comment Bank a bank of statements that can be added to your children s individual reports quickly and easily. School PUPIL TRACKER Online will automatically ensure that there is the correct use of gender specific language too. HelpCard: Auto Comments School PUPIL TRACKER Online will automatically create individual comments for writing, reading and mathematics based on a pupil s current attainment, their progress and the APP aspects or targets they have achieved through the academic year. Auto Grades School PUPIL TRACKER Online will automatically enter grades for progress and attainment, and fill in latest assessment data in your report saving you time [writing, reading, science and mathematics]. Write a whole class comment comments that can be used across every child in your class. Keep track of your reports see which have not been started, which are underway and which reports your have finished. Work on reports wherever you log into School PUPIL TRACKER Online you can work on the reports of any of the children you have access to with School PUPIL TRACKER Online this means job share teachers or teachers who teach across a number of classes can work on their parts of the reports too. Work on reports as either a whole class, in groups or edit an individual report you choose how to work on your reports, either using the Annual Report Builder where you can access groups of reports together quickly, or look in depth at one child s report and edit it or check it online. Page 1 This Help Card was last updated: 09/02/2018

2 SECTION 1: The Report Writing Process This is a summary of the Report Writing Process in School PUPIL TRACKER Online. Green sections are covered by this Help Card. 1. School designs the report layouts for Y1-Y6 and EYFS Choose how your reports will be set up and what you will be reporting to parents. HelpCard: Section 2: The Report Layout Builder: HelpCard: The different Sections you can add to your report: 2. School finalises report layouts and lets teachers access the report writer Once you have made a decision on what your reports will contain, you must finalise your layouts. We recommend discussing the report layout with your staff before you do finalise your report layout. HelpCard: Section 3: Finalising your Layouts: 3. Teachers write COMMENT BANKS and individual reports Teachers write the reports for the children in their class, including class and year group comments and COMMENT BANKS. HelpCard: How teachers write their reports: HelpCard: Using the COMMENT BANK to write reports: 4. School unlocks auto-comments so teachers can edit them We recommend that you only unlock the auto-comment boxes AFTER APP and EYFS judgements are completed and AFTER the assessments have been added in your chosen SHORT TERM column. HelpCard: Section 4: Unlocking Auto-comments: 5. Teachers finish their reports and tick FINISHED Teachers finish their reports and tick the FINISHED box for each report. The comments on the report will now be saved and fixed. HelpCard: Section 8: Finishing your reports: 6. Leaders check the reports and tick CHECKED Leaders check each report and tick the CHECKED box for each report. This will LOCK the report so the report cannot now be altered. You may untick the CHECKED box to unlock / edit the report later if you wish. HelpCard: Section 2: Checking reports: 7. School uploads attendance and lates to add to reports We recommend that attendance is uploaded using a manual report. Transferring attendance using a CTF does not include LATES for children and so you must complete this step if you have included attendance as a section in your report. If your report layout does not include an attendance section, you may ignore this step. HelpCard: 8. School SAVES and PUBLISHES reports Once attendance is checked, reports can be SAVED and PUBLISHED - this locks the attendance in place and saves the report for future academic years. HelpCard: Section 3: SAVING and PUBLISHING reports: 9. Printing reports HelpCard: Section 4: Batch Printing reports: Page 2 This Help Card was last updated: 09/02/2018

3 SECTION 2: What is a COMMENT BANK? What is a Comment Bank? A Comment Bank is a set of paragraphs that can be used to add to children s reports quickly and easily. By building up a bank of comments (such as a paragraph for high-achievers, one for above average achievers, one for average achievers, one for below average achievers and one for well below average achievers) you can then assign a different paragraph to different children across your class Comment Banks can be shared amongst teachers across your school Comment Banks are automatically individually tailored to reports a pupil s name can be added and the text is modified to the correct gender of the child We recommend each teacher invests some time in crafting considered paragraphs for their COMMENT BANKS before beginning to build up their reports. IMPORTANT TIME SAVING TIP: You might not need to create COMMENT BANKS for the CORE: Writing, CORE: Reading, CORE: Mathematics or CORE: Science boxes as School PUPIL TRACKER will craft individual comments for every child if you are using School PUPIL TRACKER to set targets or record NC2014 objectives. You will be able to quickly assign a different coloured comment from your COMMENT BANK to each child in the Report Builder. [name] will be replaced by each child s name and any gender specific language will be replaced by the corresponding correct gender specific pronouns for each child it really is easy! Auto saving COMMENT BANK boxes save automatically. The boxes do not go orange, but look for the Saving last changes in the upper left corner. You should look for the save confirmation on the page to reassure becomes yourself it has saved. Please wait for the last box to save before beginning work on your next box to ensure your comment or grade has been saved. Troubleshooting: If the Saving last changes stays orange your comment has not saved you should click on it again and click away to another location on the page to try to save the box again. Page 3 This Help Card was last updated: 09/02/2018

4 Spell checking your comments All modern browsers have built-in spell checking functions which are quick and easy to use. Each browser is used slightly differently. Spell checking in Chrome, Internet Explorer 10 and 11, and Firefox Type in a text box as you would normally type. Incorrect spellings will be underlined in red. Right click on an underlined work to be given an option to correct your spelling, for example: Click on the correct word you require (such as worked in the example above) and your text will be corrected. Spell checking in Safari When working in a text box, right click on the underlined word. Now click on Spelling and Grammar and then click on Show Spelling and Grammar Follow the guidance to correct the spelling. Page 4 This Help Card was last updated: 09/02/2018

5 SECTION 3: How to create your own COMMENT BANK This Section will guide you through creating your COMMENT BANKS You can create your COMMENT BANK by clicking on the Create and edit your COMMENT BANK link in the Annual Report Writer menu. Your list may not be number 4 depending on the choices made by your school. If you are working on EYFS reports, please click the EYFS link. If you are working on reports for children in years 1 to 6, please click on the Y1-Y6 link. The first time you open your COMMENT BANK at the beginning of each academic year s reports, it will be blank (unless the software has been able to locate any comments you made last year for the same subjects). Don t worry if this page is blank, your last year s COMMENT BANK has been saved but you may need to search for it more on that later. Each column in the grid represents a section in your school s Annual Report that needs to be completed for each child. IMPORTANT TIME SAVING TIP: You might not need to create COMMENT BANKS for the CORE: Writing, CORE: Reading, CORE: Mathematics or CORE: Science boxes as School PUPIL TRACKER will craft individual comments for every child if you are using School PUPIL TRACKER to set targets or record APP. Page 5 This Help Card was last updated: 09/02/2018

6 The rules of creating good Comment Banks When creating all your COMMENT BANKS remember to DO these things: Use [name] to refer to a child s name using square brackets Use [name]'s and it will be replaced with (e.g.) Peter's Use gender specific language such as he, his etc. this will be automatically changed later depending on each child's gender We recommend writing comments for a male as this converts to female comments very accurately Write paragraphs that are linked to the colour coding (dark green for excellent, green for good etc.) this will be explained further below You SHOULD NOT do these things: Do not use pupil s names Do not leave spaces or dots (...) for pupils names use [name] instead Do not use (name) in round brackets - use [name] Do not mix up good paragraphs and write them in the red boxes When writing your COMMENT BANK, we have created a simple five grade system to help you create paragraphs for your reports. Darker green box for very good or excellent comments Light green box for very good or doing well comments White box for average comments Light red box for needs to improve comments Red box for lots of improvement needs comments This will help you write a range of comments and will also allow you to store and share your comments consistently across your school and for use next year. There is also an extra handy sixth ungraded box you can use this to enter any comment that you wish. We call this the Flexi-comment as it can be very versatile, as you will see later. Page 6 This Help Card was last updated: 09/02/2018

7 For example, I can type an excellent comment in the darker green box (Comment 1) as shown on the right. In this way, you can build up a bank of graded comments for each of the columns or sections in the report. You do not need to use all five boxes if you do not wish to. The box will auto save when you click away at any other place on the screen. You may enter text in these boxes by: Typing directly in the box Copying and pasting text from (for example) Microsoft Word Clicking the will DELETE or clear the comment (this cannot be undone). Page 7 This Help Card was last updated: 09/02/2018

8 SECTION 4: Saving and searching COMMENT BANKS This Section will guide you through saving, sharing and searching through COMMENT BANKS To the side of each COMMENT BANK box is an edit button: You can click on this icon to access other people s comments, save your own and share comments. Clicking on the button opens the COMMENT BANK pad The current column you are writing the comment for (e.g. Reading or PE) 2 2. Click a numbered box to jump to a different graded comment Your current graded comment you can edit the comment here too 4. Clear or delete the comment 5. Archive a comment save the comment forever (see below) 6. Assign a comment to a specific year group (see below) The COMMENT BANK Pad 7 7. Search other COMMENT BANKS (see below) The COMMENT BANK Pad is a useful tool that lets you access your own COMMENT BANK, and also search through other comments written by teachers at your school or by School PUPIL TRACKER. Your own COMMENT BANK paragraphs are always located on the left of the pad to the right is a search tool to explore and find other comments. Page 8 This Help Card was last updated: 09/02/2018

9 Search through other people s COMMENT BANKS You are able to access ALL the comments written in your school. You are able to access ALL the comments created by the staff at School PUPIL TRACKER. You CANNOT access comments from other schools. School PUPIL TRACKER will try to search for similar comments for you whenever you open the COMMENT BANK Pad. When you are writing, saving and sharing your paragraphs in the COMMENT BANKS, School PUPIL TRACKER is automatically categorising them and labelling them with year groups it does this based on the area of report you are writing for and the year groups of children you are accessing. You can access previous and current COMMENT BANKS by using the search areas on the right side of the COMMENT BANK Pad. First select a comment bank theme, such as geography or creative skills and development. Next choose a year group from the second drop down menu. School PUPIL TRACKER will automatically look for matches. For example, if I search for ICT and Year 4, School PUPIL TRACKER will look for any matching comments. We can see it has found a range of graded comments and has opened these up below the search drop downs. Each comment is colour-coded based on the graded colours we looked at earlier (e.g. dark green for excellent, green for good etc.). I can see that I am looking at comments written by someone else in school as they state Written by someone else Please note, comments with exact matches of text will not be duplicated on the list to reduce clutter. Page 9 This Help Card was last updated: 09/02/2018

10 Clicking on the bold title for each comment will open up the full paragraph so I can preview it and decide whether this is the sort of comment I would like to use. Notice how this comment includes [name] instead of the child s name this will be changed automatically by School PUPIL TRACKER on the child s report later. If this is the comment I would like to use, I simply click on the blue arrow and the paragraph will be automatically placed into my own comment bank area on the left. The comment has now appeared in my own COMMENT BANK area and I can add to it or amend it as much as I like. Page 10 This Help Card was last updated: 09/02/2018

11 Archiving your own COMMENT BANK The comments you have written in your current COMMENT BANK are saved for you and will be shared automatically across your school. They will also be available for you for next year s report too. However, each time you change or update your current COMMENT BANK, your comments in the COMMENT BANK are over-written. If you wish to write more than six comments for each subject area, so that you save comments you particularly like, then you can ARCHIVE the current comment you are looking at in the COMMENT PAD. Archiving a comment will save it so that it is fixed and will not change in the future even if you then go on to re-write or delete all your current COMMENT BANK comments, the archived comment will still be available. To ARCHIVE a comment FOREVER so it is not accidentally overwritten or deleted in the future by yourself, click the yellow Archive comment button. Once you have Archived a comment, you will be able to search for it using the search tool shown above. Page 11 This Help Card was last updated: 09/02/2018

12 Creating comments for different year groups across school You may wish to create comments for a subject across the whole school in one go for example, if you are the ICT teacher who teaches ICT in every year group you may have to write comments for Year 1 through to Year 6 and you want to file these comments away linked to year groups so you can find them more clearly later. To do this for each year group choose the report column (subject) you wish to write your comments for: 1. Enter your comments into the column of boxes as normal. 2. Now click on to access the COMMENT PAD. 3. Use this drop down below the box of text to file the comment in to a specific year group - for example, choose Year 4 for Year 4 comments or KS1 for Key Stage 1 comments. This means when you or another user searches for Year 4 comments, the comments you have filed in Year 4 will appear. 4. IMPORTANT: For each comment, once you have filed them into a year group, click on the Archive comment button to archive the comment. 5. Use these buttons to move from one graded comment to another: 6. Click on to return to your column of comments to write new comments for a different year group. You may choose to delete the original comments in the column or edit the comments to create a new set. Page 12 This Help Card was last updated: 09/02/2018

13 Editing and deleting comments I have archived To edit or delete comments you have previously archived, you will need to locate them in the search tool. For example, I will look for comments in creative skills, Year 3. Any comments linked to Year 3 and creative skills will appear. To the right, we can see that it has located a number of comments. The first comment is in my current COMMENT BANK. I can only edit or delete this comment in the COMMENT BANK itself you can see the cross on the right is greyed out. This is to prevent me accidentally deleting this comment. The second comment, however, is one I have archived. As it has been written by me and is not in my current COMMENT BANK, I can edit or delete this. I can click on the to EDIT the comment and change its text or link it to a different year group. I can click on the to DELETE the comment. You cannot edit or delete comments written by other users. Page 13 This Help Card was last updated: 09/02/2018

14 SECTION 5: Using the COMMENT BANKS Using COMMENT BANKS in the Report Builder Access the REPORT BUILDER from the Completing your Annual Reports pod. It may have a different number than the one shown. Please note that the EYFS Report Builder is different from the Year 1 to Year 6 Report Builder so you must make the relevant choice here to work on each report. Each section of the report has a box for each child where you can enter text. Use the spell-checking built into your browser to check the text. Use to clear or delete the contents of the box Clicking on the COMMENT BANK buttons 1 to 6 will add the COMMENT BANK statement to a child s report box. Comment Bank - comment 1 Individual report For example, clicking will add the number 1 comment from your COMMENT BANK at the top of the column. You may notice that School PUPIL TRACKER has replaced [name] with the pupil s name. It will also ensure your gender specific pronouns are used correctly as it knows the gender of each child. School PUPIL TRACKER Online will try its very best to spot all gender-specific pronouns and alter them to the correct pronouns, but we cannot guarantee this. Page 14 This Help Card was last updated: 09/02/2018

15 Using the Flexi-comment The sixth, Flexi-comment box can come in very handy here you can keep altering the comment in Comment 6 to fill in different children down the class. For example, if six children have completed good work painting Van Gogh s sunflowers, enter the text His work painting Van Gogh s Sunflowers was excellent. Now choose each child to give this short comment to and click on the relevant. These children will have this comment added on to their current report box. You could now change the comment to something different and go down your class list to add the new comment to a new set of children. Page 15 This Help Card was last updated: 09/02/2018

16 Using COMMENT BANKS in the Individual Reports Access each child s INDIVIDUAL report from the Pupil Report Progress List from the Annual Report Writer Menu. Click on a child s name in the list to go to their Individual Report. You may choose any COMMENT BANK by selecting the section title from the drop down choice in the COMMENT BANK pod this is highlighted in red on the right. Choose the Section Title you require (such as ICT as shown on the right) and your personal COMMENT BANK will load in the pod. will clear or delete the comment (this cannot be undone) will take you to the COMMENT BANK pad will transfer the paragraph into the current report (see below) To transfer a paragraph FROM the COMMENT BANK into the Individual Report: First select the report text box you would like the paragraph to be placed into. Do this by clicking on the box you require. It will turn blue (see right) Now click the button next to the comment you wish to copy across. The paragraph will now appear in your chosen box. The child s name and gender-specific pronouns will be automatically adjusted to ensure it is personalised. You may now edit or add to the text as you require. Page 16 This Help Card was last updated: 09/02/2018