Comment bank

It can be worthwhile taking the time to draft a set of standard comments for each:

subject assessment, such as German A
subject assessment area, such as the Examination result of German A.

This will save the teachers a lot of time when they are preparing their reports. You set up the standard comments in an area called the comment bank.

All classes that use the same assessment area will probably share the same comments. For example, several maths classes within a year level may have the same assessment areas and therefore comments are similar, depending on the grade.

Teachers use the comment bank to easily locate a standard, pre-written comment and paste it into their set of results. The staff can modify these comments as required or enter their own comments manually if there are no comments in the comment bank that suit their requirement.

Suggested standards for categorising comments

The following tables show some ideas for standards that you can adopt for matching ratings and student's comments.

Note: The question mark character (?) is automatically changed to the student's name. Also, gender-specific pronouns, such as his, are changed to their equivalent, such as her. It is best to use male pronouns (he, him, his, himself) when creating comments, as some female pronouns such as her match more than one male pronoun (him, his).

Note: The female possessive pronoun has two versions (her, hers) where the male has only one (his), which can cause ambiguity when converting. Consequently, the pronoun his is always converted into her. You may need to correct this to hers in some comments.

The following example rates students according to the grade they achieve.

Topic	Rating	Comment
Essay	A	? produced a very well-structured essay which demonstrated a very high level of understanding of the reasons for revolution in Russia.
Essay	B	? produced a well-structured essay which demonstrated a high level of understanding of the reasons for revolution in Russia.
Essay	C	? produced a structured essay which demonstrated a sound understanding of the reasons for revolution in Russia.

This example rates students depending on the effort that they demonstrate in class.

Topic	Rating	Comment
Overall	Excellent	Overall this has been an excellent effort shown by ? and I think he has a very prosperous future in the field of art if he chooses to pursue it.
Overall	Good	Overall this has been quite a good effort shown by ? and I think he can still achieve a good result in this topic if he was to apply himself better.
Overall	Satisfactory	Overall this has been a satisfactory effort shown by ?. A much better result would have been produced if he applied himself more thoroughly.

This more complex example extends on the above example by splitting up the grading of student comments with a suffix.

Topic	Rating	Comment
General	B01	? is very thorough in their approach to this subject and has a sound grasp of historical concepts.
General	B02	? is thorough in their approach to this subject and has a sound grasp of historical concepts.
General	C01	?'s skills in this subject are developing well and has achieved satisfactory results.
General	C02	?'s skills in this subject are considerable but has not consistently applied themselves.

You could then take the above example one step further and give it a prefix to focus on the student's ability in different areas of the subject.

Topic	Rating	Comment
General	02A01	His research report was extremely competent, displaying a very well developed ability to use and evaluate evidence.
General	03A01	He showed an excellent capacity to analyse and interpret historical representations.
General	04A01	He is a conscientious student who has a real aptitude for this subject.