Reports Part 2: Using Google Forms

Overview

In the past at my school we had to write longer, more personalised reports. The spreadsheet system works well when you have a limited variety of what to say, but can feel a little more cumbersome if you need to write entire paragraphs. At that point I was using Google Forms as my weapon of choice to create reports fast.

Prepping

The longest time element is creating the report bank in the first place which suits what you need to say. I like to start with a list of the topics I want to cover and then write a report for one student from scratch. 

For example:

Report

• Behaviour in class

• Overall grade

• Biggest success

• Exam outcome

• Homework

• Target

Harry has worked very hard in Music this year. Overall he has achieved the expected level in assessments. His biggest achievement was his / composition for film music which he can share with you from google classroom. His exam results were below what I would expect. Homework is consistently handed in on time. To make further progress next year he now needs to ensure that he uses his personal practice time efficiently to enable him to fully secure his ability to play a piece.

I then take it apart and write all the different options for it. So for example for how worked in class: 

has worked very hard in Music this year.

has worked with renewed enthusiasm in Music through the latter stages of the year.

has demonstrated limited enthusiasm for Music this year.

has lacked focus and persistence in Music this year.

I do this for each section, adapting where I need the gender pronouns etc. In the video at the bottom I go into more depth about this if you want to see wider examples of the comments I create.

Creating the google form comment bank

Once I have my comment bank created I then copy and paste each option into google forms, using the multiple choice option for each. Of course, once you have this set up for one class, you can make a copy of the overall google form and just change the names in the first section for all your other classes.

This is now the admin side done and I can get on with writing the reports. I click on the eye icon at the top of the form and start completing my google form with all my options for each pupil:

Once I'm at the bottom I just click submit, and then take the option to submit another response. I keep going until all the class are completed. 

Collating your reports for your school system

Once I've finished selecting my reports I now need to make them into a coherent whole that I can easily copy and paste into my reporting bank. I do this by clicking on the pencil in the bottom right of the form, which takes me back to my editable form. At the top I then want to select responses:

At the top you can see an option to 'view in sheets' - here you will find all the reports written separated into cells. If you copy and paste these across you will have to go through and edit the spacing between each section which is tedious and time wasting - so here is where you use my favourite concatenate formula again:

If you want to just copy and paste the formula and adapt it to your own needs it is:

=CONCATENATE(B2," ",C2,"",D2," ",E2,"",F2," ",G2,"",H2)

This then makes one report which you can copy and paste directly with no editing required on spacing:

Hermione has worked very hard in Music this year. Overall she has achieved above the expected level in assessments. Her biggest achievement was her composition for film music, which she can play to you on google classroom. Her exam results were excellent, exceeding what she had produced in class. Homework is consistently handed in on time. To make further progress next year she now needs to make a plan of how to use the musical elements before embarking on a composition task.

I hope this is helpful and saves you time over the coming weeks with report writing. As always if you have found it useful please leave a comment below. If you have ideas for how we can make report writing easier or adapt the method above, please add comments below. The more we share, the easier we can make each others' lives in the teaching profession. 

If you want to write simpler 1 to 2 sentence reports there’s an easy method using a spreadsheet. Click here to find out more. 

Video demonstration