Extended Comments

What are Extended Comments?

An extended comment is a longer form comment. Unlike narrative comments, where each line is a new level, extended comments can span multiple lines. They are useful for longer-form reports, or things such as common emails to parents.

Features of a Narrative Comment

Title

The title is displayed on The Comment Generator when you are creating your reports to help you identify which comment you are working on. Titles are not displayed on the students' reports.

Size on Generator

The size of a comment doesn't determine how it will appear on the generated report. Rather, the size affects how big the input appears on The Comment Generator. A size of 100% will take up the whole width of the screen. If you want to put three inputs next to each other, you would set the size of each to 33%.

Default Selection

By default, do you want this comment included on reports?

Selected will make it so that the comment is included on reports by default, however, it can be toggled off
Unselected will make it so that the comment is not included on reports by default, however, it can be toggled on
Always Selected will make it so that the comment is always included on reports without the option of toggling it off

Comment Format

Extended comments can only be formatted as paragraphs. You can select if the comment should begin a new paragraph or connect to the previous paragraph.

Tip:

You can set if you want list items and paragraphs to be indented by clicking on the "settings" button on the top of the generator

Writing Extended Comments

Extended comments are the easiest type of comment to create. There is no special formatting required. Any spaces you put in the comment will be preserved in the report.

Extended comments are useful for things such as standard emails sent to parents. Let's say I'm creating a generic email informing a parent that I am sending some documents home for them to sign. I might make an extended comment like this:

Insert: Tools:

Hi $text,

$Student's $text was sent home with $them today. When you get a moment, could you please review it, sign it, and send it back with $Student? Please try to return it by $date.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you!
$text

This comment will look like this on the generator:

Tip:

Want to customize this email? Create a new extended comment, click the button and then select "Document Email"

Try It Out

Want to see what the reports generated from this comment look like? Try it out yourself.

Placeholders and Fields

Placeholders are a way to easily change the content of your comment. Placeholders always begin with a dollar sign ($).

Name and Pronoun Placeholders

$Student will be replaced with the student's name
$He / $She / $They will be replaced with the correct pronoun
He / She / They are not placeholders and will not be replaced
Adding a $ before any pronoun indicates that it is a placeholder
Student / Name are not placeholders and will not be replaced

You can click the button to insert a name placeholder, or the button to insert a pronoun placeholder. The Comment Generator will recognize students' name placeholders by highlighting them in blue, and pronoun placeholders by highlighting them in green. Pronouns that are not proceeded by a $ will be underlined in green. This is to let you know that they will not be replaced - if you want them to be, add the $ before the pronoun. Likewise, the words "student" and "name" are underlined in blue. This is just incase you meant to use the placeholder $Student.

Fields

$text will be replaced with a text-input
$number will be replaced with a number-input
$quality will be replaced with a select list containing a few quality words such as excellent, good, basic and insufficient
$extended will be replaced with a select list containing many more quality words
$date will be replaced with a date-input
$today will be replaced with today's date

You can click the button to insert a field. The Comment Generator will recognize field placeholders by highlighting them in red.

You can learn more about placeholders and fields in this article.

For example, consider the following comment:

Insert: Tools:

Overall $Student demonstrated a $quality ability to {skill} this term. $They demonstrated strengths in $text. This was evident when $they $text. Moving forward, $Student is encouraged to $text.

This would appear like this on the generator: