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Report structures

The test prep session report.

A test prep report counts marks. The four sections are concepts covered, progress, homework and next focus, and every one of them should be answerable with a number, because the test the student is sitting is answered with one.

Test preparation is the one kind of tutoring where the client and the tutor already agree on the measure, which makes a vague report inexcusable. There is a score, there is a date, and there is a gap between them. A report that does not say where the marks are being lost is a report that could have been written before the session, and the family paying for eight weeks of it can tell.

01The four sections

The four names this kind of work gets, and nothing to fill in.

  1. 01Concepts covered
  2. 02Progress
  3. 03Homework
  4. 04Next focus

You are not choosing this from a gallery. You answer one question when you sign up and these four become the shape every comes back in. Any of them can be renamed, added to or removed, and your version is what you get from then on.

02A finished report

Not a blank table. The document, written out.

Invented student: Daniel, 17, sitting the SAT in nine weeks, session 6 of 16.

Concepts covered
Timed reading, two passages under section conditions, then a line by line review of every question he changed his mind on.
Progress
Nine of eleven correct on passage one, seven of eleven on passage two. Of the four he lost, three were questions he had answered correctly and then changed. That is the same pattern as session four and it is now the largest single source of lost marks.
Homework
Two timed passages. Rule: no answer may be changed once written unless you can say out loud what new evidence changed it. Mark the ones you wanted to change and bring the list.
Next focus
Second guessing, directly. We will do one passage where changing an answer is not allowed at all and compare the score.

Every person, session and number above was written for this page. No real client is shown. The four section names are not samples: they are the sections the product fills in today.

03What clients ask for

Three things the reader of this report is actually looking for.

  • The current score against the target score, every time, without having to ask for it.
  • Where the marks are actually going, which is almost never the topic the family assumed.
  • Whether the remaining weeks are enough, answered honestly rather than reassuringly.

04What goes wrong

Four mistakes, and each one costs a renewal rather than a mark.

  • Reporting effort in a subject that reports scores. The test does not care how hard the session felt.
  • Averaging across sections so the weak one disappears into the strong one.
  • Homework without conditions. Two passages untimed teaches the wrong thing before a timed exam.
  • Never naming the behaviour, such as changing answers or skipping the last question, which is often worth more marks than any topic.

05How it gets written

Five steps, and four of them take no time at all.

  1. 01Record the session

    Record on a phone, a laptop or the call software you already work on, with everybody in the session having agreed out loud first.

  2. 02Upload the recording

    Upload the file when the session ends, or paste a transcript if your call software already made one.

  3. 03Read the draft

    The draft comes back in about a minute, in the four sections: Concepts covered, Progress, Homework, Next focus.

  4. 04Correct it

    Change anything that is wrong and add anything the recording missed. Nothing goes anywhere until you have done this.

  5. 05Send it

    It goes to the client under your own name and stays on their own page with every report before it.

06Where this came from

Two sources outside this company.

Nearby

Try it on one session

Bring one recording and read what comes back in these four sections. No account and no card, and the 7 day trial needs no card either.