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Report card comments that sound like you wrote them

Free banks by grade band, achievement level and learning skill. Every comment is a starting sentence to edit, not a finished paragraph to paste — because a family can tell the difference.

Written by a practising Ontario teacher · Last reviewed: September 2026

Choose a grade band

The same achievement level needs a different sentence at six and at sixteen. These are separated for that reason rather than for the sake of having more pages.

Kindergarten

Comments for every achievement level, with an opening, the evidence, and a next step.

Primary (Grades 1–3)

Comments for every achievement level, with an opening, the evidence, and a next step.

Junior (Grades 4–6)

Comments for every achievement level, with an opening, the evidence, and a next step.

Intermediate (Grades 7–8)

Comments for every achievement level, with an opening, the evidence, and a next step.

Secondary (Grades 9–12)

Comments for every achievement level, with an opening, the evidence, and a next step.

Learning skills (E / G / S / N)

All six skills at all four marks, in a register for younger and older students.

What makes a comment worth reading

A report card comment has one job: tell a family something they did not already know, and give them something to do about it. Most comments fail at both, because they are written at eleven at night for the thirtieth time.

Every bank here follows the same three-part shape, which is the shortest structure that does the job:

  1. 1. What the student can do. Specific enough that it could not be said of everyone.
  2. 2. The evidence. What you actually saw. This is the part that makes it believable.
  3. 3. The next step. One thing, actionable at home, not a restatement of the problem.

A comment that is only praise gives a family nothing to act on. One that is only deficit gives them nothing to hold on to. The three parts together are what a parent can actually use.

On using a bank at all

There is a reasonable objection to comment banks: a report card should be about one child, and a bank is by definition not. That objection is right about pasting and wrong about starting.

What takes the time on a report card is not the judgement — you already know how the student is doing — it is finding the first sentence, thirty times. A bank that gives you the opening and gets out of the way saves the part that is drudgery and leaves the part that is teaching. Pasting one unedited is how you end up telling a parent their daughter is a he.

Frequently asked questions

Are these free to use?

Yes. Copy them, edit them, use them in any gradebook or word processor. No account, no attribution required.

Will a parent notice I used a bank?

If you paste it unedited, eventually yes — most obviously when two children in the same class come home with the same sentence. Every comment here is written as a starting point with the specifics left for you to add.

Do these work outside Ontario?

The achievement bands follow the Ontario levels because that is the system they were written in, but the language is not Ontario-specific. Any system with a four-point scale, or percentages, maps onto them directly.

What about pronouns?

Every comment on these pages is shown with they/them. Level Up Classroom fills these same templates from each student’s own recorded pronouns, including verb agreement, so "they have improved" and "she has improved" both come out right — and uses they/them where none are recorded, rather than guessing.

Related

Or let the gradebook write it

These sentences do not know your students. Your gradebook does.

A bank can only offer you a level. Level Up Classroom writes the comment from what it already holds for that student — their category averages, the strand they are weakest in, the assignments still outstanding, their learning skill marks — so the comment names the actual reason rather than the general one.

You review and edit every comment before it goes anywhere, and student names are replaced with placeholders before any text reaches the AI, so a child’s name never leaves your browser.

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A gradebook that does this for you

Level Up Classroom tracks achievement and learning skills together, and drafts report card comments from the marks you have already entered. Free to start.

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