Kids working away with big pencils. Image courtesy of stockimages / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Today I have a meeting with the twins teacher. Yes my first parent teacher meeting for Kindy. I am so excited to hear what the teacher has to say about the girls. I am interested to see what differences there are between them if any with their schooling.

About a week ago we got the girls first report card. I had no idea kindy kids got one but I suppose they are in primary school so it is to be expected. Hubby and I were so proud of our little girls. They have done so well. They got marked HIGH for everything!

I do hope that the teacher just does not say they are doing well here, and good here and this and that. I would like to know what the teacher is noticing are their strengths. This might be hard to establish this early on and especially in kindy. I would like more detail in the reports and to know more about how well the child is going, not just some sentence that does not tell me anything. Do you find that you are not really learning much from the schools?

Near the end of term 1 we got a print out of how the kids went with their best start assessment. However this print out was a guide on how to do things at home and what to start and do. It let me know what they looked at but did not tell me where my child is in this list. Is my kid on target? Is my child learning well? I was hoping it would pin point where you were placed with numeracy and literacy before the start of school. Detail it in a graph or percentage if you want, just give parents some indication of where your child is placed in their learning.

If you know where your child needs more help then you can address this at home. I did mention this with another mother and she said if my kids were having any issues the teacher would have a meeting with me during term to discuss. No meeting has been arranged so I assume all is good. Now with the High listings on the reports and the glowing feedback I am sure the girls are doing very well.

I am not one to think that just due to my kid having a good report that whatever my kid does will be golden. I would like to be a fully informed parent and understand if my child needs help in an area that I can address and give the attention it needs. I would hate to find out at a later stage that I did not know something was wrong and could have been corrected if I only knew about it.

So I am excited to go to the school and see all the work that the teacher has kept for each child throughout the year. The girls are super keen to show mummy all their work and to have their teacher tell me how good they are.

Do you find that reports now are not giving you any information? Do you want more? Is it just me? When I was at school reports told you all things, the bad, the good and the excellent. Reports years ago were sometimes rude, but some were to the point and you understood what the teacher was telling you. I don’t want to have bad things said about someone but if you need to have more attention on maths, or reading then it is a good idea to list that. Right?

Let me know your thoughts. Send in your comments.