Report-Writing Season: Comment Banks and Time-Savers for Busy Teachers
By The EduSellers Team · · Teacher Resources
Few jobs swallow a teacher's evenings like report season. The trick is not to write faster — it is to stop writing the same sentence from scratch forty times. A good comment bank gives you a tested opening line, a body that you personalise, and a forward-looking close.
Start with a consistent structure
Every strong comment does three things: it names a strength, it describes the next step, and it stays specific to the child. Keep your opening and closing lines consistent across the class so the report reads professionally, then pour your energy into the personalised middle. A ready-made set of general opening and closing report comments removes the blank-page problem instantly.
Bank the language you reach for again and again
Effort, participation and behaviour comments are where most of us repeat ourselves — so bank them. A participation and attitude comment bank and a behaviour and social skills comment bank give you graded phrases you can drop in and adjust, which also keeps your language fair and consistent from one student to the next.
Personalise quickly with sentence starters
The fastest reports still feel personal because the teacher swaps in one concrete detail — a piece of work, a moment of growth, a goal. A bank of personalised sentence starters scaffolds exactly that, so you spend your time on the child rather than on the grammar.
Browse more planning and admin time-savers in our Teacher Resources collection, all created by practising Australian teachers.