I’m back to share some tips I have found useful when writing psychoeducational reports. As School Psychologists, report writing is an inevitable part of our job. There are certainly times I love closing my door and writing up my hard evaluation work knowing it will help a student get the support they need in school. There are also times when the stack of evaluations to complete feels endless. Either way, I have found these tips to be helpful no matter what the situation.

1. Create a “monster” template: I have a giant report template (I actually don’t even know how many pages it is now!!!) with a template for every single test I give. This includes the WISC, that I use all the time, but every single subtest from the NESPY that I have given in 7 years . It’s a lot of information to delete each time, but it works for me. For years, I would back to other reports I’d written and copy and paste. It was such a waste of time. Now, each summer, I spend time, adding it any new tests I’ve done during the year, and updating my templates to new editions of the test. If for nothing else, I would recommend this way of doing things because there is nothing worse than reading a report about “Jenny” and halfway through reading the name “Sam” a few times. Don’t let that happen. Make a monster template.
2. Search & Replace:

The top of my report template looks like this. It’s a reminder that the first thing I need to do is use “search & replace” to change Student to the name of the student I’m working on, and then he/she or his/her. I love search and replace!

3. Highlight what needs to change:

In my monster template, I also highlight every piece of information that needs to change when I’m writing the actual report-last name, dates, names of teachers, scores, and score descriptors. This make it easy for me to make sure I changed and added in everything I need to. Again-I never leave names in.

4. Make forms for everything: This is just the way I function, but it helps for me to make sure I’m doing everything, and I keep everything in the right place. I have a form for observations, student interviews, and reevaluation summary. This makes it easier to grab what I need as I am writing.

5. Include recommendations as part of your template:  I’m not sure why, but for the longest time, I never included recommendations as part of my template. Then, last year, I realized that I was using similar recommendations-they were always a unique combination of what fit the student’s profile, but I could definitely make a (huge) list and mix and match. So, I did. Another summer project and a big one, but I put together and categorized my reccomendations by area.

Once reports are written-we’re like 75% of the way there, right?

6. Print and review:  Once I’ve written my report and spell checked everything, I always print and read it over. Something about seeing it on paper makes me catch mistakes much more efficiently than on screen.

7. Prep for your audience:  A report means nothing if the people (parents, teachers) you are writing it for, can’t understand it, right? So, after I’ve got my final draft all set, I go through my report, highlight what I want to share, and make tons of notes on my copy, about how I want to explain the results of parents. “Bobby has low working memory but does better on visual tasks…” but what does that mean for the way he learns? Explain it in teacher and parent terms, and talk about how this will impact Bobby in school and ways that the team can support him.

Want to read more?

I shared here the elements I include in my reports, and here how I get organized for all my assessments.

What tips do you have? Share!