The Teacher Rating Card
You are the one who fills this in, not the student: a rating of the behavior you observe in your own class — participation, following through on tasks, attention, and dealing with classmates.
What it measures
Self-report on its own is incomplete: one student flatters themselves in their answers, and another does not see in their own behavior what you see. And the most important thing this card gives you is not its score but the gap between it and what the student said about themselves — when the student says they are organized and you see otherwise, that difference is itself the information you start from.
How to read the result
Array
Before administering
Fill it in in one calm sitting, not while you are angry about something that happened today and not straight after an excellent lesson — both states color your rating. Call the past two months to mind, not yesterday.
Its limits
A rating scale from a single informant in a single setting. It is affected by your relationship with the student, by your subject, and by where your lesson falls in the day — and that is why it is described as "what one teacher observed" and not "what the student is". And it does not diagnose anything: weak attention here is a description of classroom behavior, not a diagnosis of a disorder, and whoever thought otherwise has wronged their student.
Its dimensions
- Class ParticipationWhen high: They take part, ask questions and volunteer without any push from you.
- Task Follow-ThroughWhen high: They hand work in on time and follow up on correcting their mistakes.
- Attention in ClassWhen high: They follow the whole explanation and work on their own without supervision.
- Dealing With PeersWhen high: Cooperative, well accepted, and handles disagreement calmly.