Making Student Feedback Files

Click here to download a template file of student feedback!

Student feedback template files are a fast way to get started with Report Card Writer. They allow you to upload all of your report card comments with one covenient file upload, instead of typing all the comments in manually.

You can also create your own file of student feedback by following this procedure:

Step One: Open your favorite spreadsheet program.

This can either be Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Either will work just fine!

Step Two: Create six columns.

In the first row of the spreadsheet, enter the following six column names:

• Subject
• Gender
• Category
• fb_positive
• fb_neutral
• fb_constructive

These six names form column headers for your report card comments. Make sure each one is spelled and punctuated correctly!

Step Three: Add areas that you’d like to give feedback in the “Category” column.

Report Card Writer uses the “Category” column to build a form for your report card comments.

For example: if the “Category” column contains the following line items:

• Opening Sentence
• Completing Assignments
• Test Preparedness
• Growth/Grade Level
• Participation
• Problem Solving/Flexible Thinking
• Perseverence/Growth Mindset
• Closing Sentence

Then your report card form will look like this:

add image of radio form here

Note that the “Gender” column is included to ensure that all of your student feedback is assigned proper pronouns. Report Card Writer accepts three gender fields: “Male”, “Female”, and “Nonbinary”. A “Nonbinary” selection will use “They” and “Theirs” for pronouns.

Step Four: Add a short bit of feedback for each category.

Report Card Writer expects that each feedback category will have three pieces of feedback:

• A positive feedback comment for students who have performed particularly well,
• A neutral feedback comment for students who performed acceptably, and
• A constructive feedback comment for students whose work needs improvement.

These comments should go in the corresponding column in the category line.

• fb_positive should be used for positive feedback comments,
• fb_neutral should be used for neutral feedback comments, and
• fb_constructive should be used for constructive feedback comments.

Step Five: Save off the CSV file of student feeback.

This step requires you to save off your spreadsheet file as a CSV. These instructions differ slightly for Excel and Google Sheets; we’ve listed instructions for both here.

Microsoft Excel

In the menu tray, Click “File”, and then “Save As”.

Enter your file name in the file name bar, and then in the dropdown beneath it, select “CSV (comma delimited) (*.csv)”. Click the “Save” button, and designate a location to save your file.

Google Sheets

In the menu tray, Click “File”, and then mouse over the “Download” option.

In the menu that pops out, select “Comma Separated Values (.csv, current sheet)”. This will download the sheet you’re currently looking at to your Downloads folder.

Step Six: Import Your Feedback into Report Card Writer!

At this point, you are done creating your name template file, and ready to load it into Report Card Writer!

Open Report Card Writer, hit “Select” to choose your file of student names, and point the dialog box at your newly saved file!