Narrative Comments

What are Narrative Comments?

Narrative comments are one of the two types of comments that can be used in a comment bank. A narrative comment is useful for providing information in either paragraphs or point form.

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.

Heading

Comment headings are displayed on the generated report. Headings will start a new paragraph or new list. For example, if you have the comment "Sophia has demonstrated a basic ability to multiply multi-digit numbers accurately" with the heading "Multiplication:", it will display like this:

Multiplication: Sophia has demonstrated a basic ability to multiply multi-digit numbers accurately

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%.

Users can select

Do you want to be able to select only one item from this comment, or multiple items?

Comments where you can only select one item look like this:

While comments where you can select multiple items look like this:

Comment Format

You can format the comments on the generated reports either as paragraphs or lists. If you are using the paragraph format, you can select if the comment should begin a new paragraph or connect to the previous paragraph.

Tips:

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
Comments with a new heading will always start on a new paragraph

Writing Narrative Comments

The Basics

A narrative comment is a collection of items. Users can select one (or more) of these items to include in their reports. There needs to be a line break in between each item. Don't worry if one item is longer than one line - The Comment Generator won't mistake this for being several items.

Let's say I'm wanting to give a student a comment based on what level of achievement they obtained on a lab report. If I have four levels of achievement, I could put one on each line:

Insert: Tools:

On $their chemical reactions lab report, $student demonstrated an excellent understanding of chemical reactions.
On $their chemical reactions lab report, $student demonstrated a good understanding of chemical reactions.
On $their chemical reactions lab report, $student demonstrated a basic understanding of chemical reactions.
On $their chemical reactions lab report, $student did not demonstrate a grade-level understanding of chemical reactions.

This would create this input on the generator:

Adding Labels

I can give a label to each of my items. By starting the item with a <tag>, I can indicate the label. The Comment Generator will recognize a label by highlighting it in purple. This label will then be displayed when I'm generating reports. This can be useful for hiding longer comments when I'm generating reports. I can also add a label by clicking the button.

Insert: Tools:

<Excellent> On $their chemical reactions lab report, $student demonstrated an excellent understanding of chemical reactions.
<Good> On $their chemical reactions lab report, $student demonstrated a good understanding of chemical reactions.
<Basic> On $their chemical reactions lab report, $student demonstrated a basic understanding of chemical reactions.
<Not at Grade Level> On $their chemical reactions lab report, $student did not demonstrate a grade-level understanding of chemical reactions.

This would create this input on the generator:

Making an Item Checked by Default

If I want one to be checked by default, all I need to do is put a # at the start of the line. I need to put the # at the start of the item, before the level tag. I could also add it by clicking the button. For example, if I want the second item to be the default option, I would write this:

Insert: Tools:

<Excellent> On $their chemical reactions lab report, $student demonstrated an excellent understanding of chemical reactions.
#<Good> On $their chemical reactions lab report, $student demonstrated a good understanding of chemical reactions.
<Basic> On $their chemical reactions lab report, $student demonstrated a basic understanding of chemical reactions.
<Not at Grade Level> On $their chemical reactions lab report, $student did not demonstrate a grade-level understanding of chemical reactions.

This would create this input on the generator:

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:

#On $his final assignment, $student noted, "$text." $His score on the final assignment was $number/100.

This would appear like this on the generator: