[SIMS] Individual Report Examples

[emmaburt]

Has anyone got any good examples of progress reports created on sims individual reports.

we are looking at changing from the traiditional school report to termly progress report for all students and i am trying to come up with ideas for format with some more information other than just a table of current and predicted grades.

has anyone used the graphs before? and have you any advice

thanks

Emma

[number34]

Hi Emma,
we don't use graphs here but I'm sure Sivadam will have some information on that! We do use a lot of grades, targets and colours in our progress reports and they look quite good but really you need to think about the data you collect first and then think about how to display it if you are going to change from a traditional report.

[emmaburt]

thanks for that, yes i think the data we have is workable.

we report on predicted grade, current grade, attitude to learning (a level of 1-5) then a homework mark of satisfactory, unsatisfactory of not completed.

I use traffic light systems on our marksheets so could copy over the colours.

is there any chance you could give me an example of yours? I am looking for some ideas and will be taking them to senior team next week for discussions.

thanks

[NorthernSands]

Hi Emma,

I re-did ours when I arrived at this school in September. They were using the old 'landscape with a table' style. I'm not saying mine is any good. Given time I'm sure it could be better (well, given time or a new senior team!), but it might get your creative juices flowing, as it were, along with any others you see.

I've also included the template so you can see how it's constructed and what's missing for this particular student. Pay attention to the <Report Section> and </Report Section> tags as what's between them won't appear if there's no data (eg EAL and AEN in this case).

Hope this helps!

Pete.

[emmaburt]

thanks Peter that looks really good, has already given me some ideas!

[vikpaw]

I like the coloring and use of description not grade from the aspect.

[NorthernSands]

@emmaburt; you're welcome. Let us know if you need any help with the creation of the templates. A word to the wise though: Word is still utterly pants at dealing with tables. You'll notice there's a very narrow (shallow? thin?) row at the top of each table, with columns that may not match the rest of the table. If I need to add extra columns or something, this top row is something I always refer back to, and quite often spit cells further down to match the top row when making amendments, then merge the cells back again, always leaving the top row as is. Er, clear as mud?!

@vikpaw; I think the description works better than grade considering most of our parents are EAL / haven't a clue what a [Sub-]Level is. Although the Middle School like it like that, the Upper School insist on the grade! Grrr! The colouring works well, but we actually switch it off for printing at the moment, and back on again when uploading to the DMS.

[vikpaw]

When we did use graphs, we had this for ESL and the other is just your bog standard table.

esl graph report.jpg

ib summary.jpg

[NorthernSands]

I like those graphs, @vikpaw. Very clear and very informative. Maybe I should take another look at them next year. I presume 5 years worth of computer enhancements will make running them take less than three weeks...

[Sivadam]

Hi Emma,
we don't use graphs here but I'm sure Sivadam will have some information on that! ........

Emma,
If you PM me (or email me!) your email address then I will send you an example of our KS3 AM7 Individual report.
Amongst other things, the report contains progress graphs for English and Maths, across the Key Stage. Obviously these are also published to parents etc on SLG as well!
The graph labels show the AM7 Sublevel value for each data collection. This is despite there being a KB on SupportNet that suggests that this is not possible! We have also pasted on a more meaningful scale for the Y axis of each graph.

[emmaburt]

got it!

thanks Sividam, looks great!

[joseph]

Hi how do you put different colors depending on the grades? i think that is awesome

[NorthernSands]

Hi how do you put different colors depending on the grades? i think that is awesome

Yeah, it can look pretty good. The colours are taken straight from the cell colour in the marksheet, so you can either colour the cells / columns manually or colour them based on the contents (which I guess is what you're referring to). Doing the latter is straight forward, if time consuming. You essentially have to use a Nested If Then Else formula column which refers to the column you want to colour, with each 'If' testing the criteria for each colour, and the 'Then' returning the original column and the colour. You have to do this for every column you want coloured, so a marksheet to do a year group might run to well over 100 columns (half the original columns, half formula columns). Once done though, it's done (and @vikpaw has an amazing VB script so you can change result sets in bulk so you can just clone the first template). A screenshot might help:

NestedIfThenElseColouring.jpg

You have to be careful when using colours, as Red is the exact same shade as unsaved Cell text (so you can't see the data). In my case I don't care 'cause the the data is going to be saved (to save the colour to the result) and the result will turn black and be visible again, but there are some circumstances when you do want to read unsaved data.

The colours I used are (the same as used by default in Office 2007 for some conditional formatting):

Colour	R	G	B
Blue	0	112	192
Green	0	176	80
Amber	255	192	0
Red	255	0	0

Pete


EDIT: Oh after you've created your first If Then Else formula column, when creating the next one, choose ITE formula type then choose to clone it from the first ITE column. This'll save you having to re-enter the colours.

[vikpaw]

There also is the possibility of putting in a conditional formatting rule in the Word Template to do colouring. This may, {not sure as not used it myself}, be quicker than editing marksheets. This was how it was done before the Ind. Reps. pulled colours through.