best Gymnastics Report cards

I went through my file folder of OLD Recreation Gymnastics progress reports. It wasn’t a pretty sight. 😦

Most are too complex, too time consuming and the unclear to parents. In many cases, report cards are a waste of time.

The only two I like were home made. For example, here’s a system David Burgess and I used at Taiso Gymnastics during the 1990s. (click on image for larger version)

Page 1

Page 2

Those were photocopied back-to-back twice. Folded. One copy kept in the gymnast’s file, the other sent home to the parent on the second last week of the Recreation session.

Short. Simple. Not too onerous for the coach. Rather than test every skill at that level of the Canadian Gymnastics Report Card system, we selected only 30 KEY drills. Progress for each marked: Attempted, Learning, or Mastered.

Coach worked on filling out the DRAFT copy throughout the session, rather than all at once end-of-term.

Even simpler was a home made system I used at Altadore back in the 1980s.

One page. Single sided. Only 10 key skills from each level.

Those were the days when “cut and paste” meant cut with scissors and paste with magic tape. The drills were taken from an earlier version of the Canadian “badge” program.

Here’s the template I used.

Rec Report Cards are mainly for the parents. Kids and coaches are far less interested. Best practice is to make time to chat with each parent who comes into the gym, end of class. Update them on at least one point of “progress” for the day. Informal communication is more powerful than formal.

IEGA has continuous evaluation. They can print an up-to-date report card at any time. That’s cool.

The GOAL is to keep your reregistration rate as high as possible.

Leave a comment if you’ve a favourite way to monitor and report progress for once-a-week kids.

related

• 2nd Edition of the CANGYM recreation program

• Gymnastics Zone – Gym Communications Systems

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