Mechanical versus observational

Most of what makes report writing take a weekend is mechanical: turning notes into sentences, keeping the tone consistent, avoiding the same opening forty times, hitting the word count, getting the grammar right at midnight. None of that is teaching. All of it can go to a machine.

What cannot go to a machine is the observation. That this child finally put her hand up in week seven. That he explains fractions to his neighbour better than he writes them. That she has stopped rubbing out every mistake. Those are the sentences parents keep. They come from you, and no tool has seen them.

The rule for the whole course: AI drafts from your observations. It never invents them. Every report, every resource, every parent message starts with something specific you know, and the machine builds around it.

In practice. A Year 4 teacher tried an AI report tool that generated comments from attainment grades alone. The reports were fluent and completely interchangeable. She read three aloud to a colleague, who could not tell which child was which.

She rebuilt her process so that every report started with one line of her own notes: something she had seen. The AI expanded and polished. The parents' evening that term had the highest turnout she had known, and several parents quoted a line back to her.

At your desk. Take your class list. Next to each name, write one specific thing you have noticed this term that is not a grade. If a name has nothing, that is your first job before any AI: go and notice something.

Write it down.

• Names with an observation:
• Names with nothing yet:
• The observation I am proudest of: