Describe your school's referral process and Makeform creates a behavior referral form teachers can use to record observable conduct, context, classroom responses, urgency, and the support requested from the office.
Route referrals to email, Google Sheets, Slack, and Zapier.
Sample prompts for the builder
Choose a complete prompt, adapt it to your policy, or send it to the Makeform builder. Each structure is an editable example.
Audience
Elementary teachers referring an incident to the office
Format
Short referral with conditional follow-up
Prompt size
253 chars
Example form structure
Short referral with conditional follow-up
Student, grade, and homeroom
When and where did the incident occur?
Which observable behaviors occurred?
What did you directly observe?
Review priority and requested support
Suggested routing tags
Routine review
Same-day review
Follow-up needed
Ask staff to describe what they directly observed instead of assigning a motive; specific actions, time, place, and responses give reviewers a clearer record.
Step 1
Observe
record actions, context, time, and location
Step 2
Respond
note strategies used and the student's response
Step 3
Refer
choose priority and request the right support
Step 4
Follow up
document review, contact, and next steps
A clearer school referral
Separate observed actions from interpretation, record staff responses, and make the requested next step explicit.
Required student, setting, time, behavior, and narrative fields keep essential facts together across staff.
Conditional sections show witness, contact, or property questions only when relevant.
Priority and requested-support fields help staff sort routine from same-day review.
One structure, several settings
Keep core fields while tailoring choices for classrooms, transportation, activities, or support teams.
Course, period, expectation, intervention, impact, and requested support.
Grade-friendly choices, homeroom context, and support requests.
Route, supervisor, witnesses, response, and location details.
Frequency, duration, strategies, strengths, and team-review requests.
Build the referral workflow
Start with your review process, then test with submitters and reviewers.
Specify submitters, required facts, priority labels, and reviewers.
Add your behavior terms, locations, grades, and emergency-process guidance.
Test routine, recurring, and higher-priority examples for relevant questions.
Publish a staff link and configure notifications for reviewers.
Referral form choices
Structured fields create more consistent records than scattered messages.
Field guide
Use these six sections as a practical starting point, then align the labels, access rules, retention practices, and response choices with your school's procedures.
Student and referrer
Collect existing school identifiers and enough referrer context for follow-up.
Incident basics
Date, time, and location distinguish events and reveal setting patterns.
Observable account
Pair categories with a factual sequence of actions and words, not assumed intent.
Context and pattern
For recurring concerns, separate context observations from conclusions and allow unknown answers.
Response already taken
Record each strategy and what the student did next.
Routing and follow-up
Use priority and support choices for triage, plus reviewer-only outcome fields when needed.
Related tools
Use these live Makeform tools for adjacent incident reporting, student reflection, attendance, family meetings, progress review, and confidential concern intake.
Create a detailed incident record when the primary job is documenting what occurred.
Open toolBuild a student-facing reflection or tracking form for agreed behaviors and check-in periods.
Open toolCollect assignment, scheduling, attendance, and completion details for a detention workflow.
Open toolOffer meeting times and collect the context families and teachers want to discuss.
Open toolRecord academic, participation, and support updates after a review period.
Open toolProvide a separate intake path for concerns that may be submitted without identifying the reporter.
Open toolFAQ
Practical answers for teachers, administrators, and student support teams designing a referral process.
It is a structured way for staff to send an observed behavior concern to an administrator or support team. It records the student, setting, factual account, staff response, priority, and requested follow-up. The school determines the appropriate response.
Write a chronological account of actions and words directly observed. Include the setting, relevant expectation, what happened before and after, who was present, and the student's response. Avoid guessing at intent.
Define review-priority choices from your school process and route each to the correct reviewer. Direct staff to the established emergency channel when immediate help is needed instead of relying on a form.
Yes. Conditional logic can show follow-up fields for selected behavior, location, witnesses, injury, property impact, or repeated patterns while hiding unrelated questions.
Collect only needed information, limit access, and configure sharing, notifications, connected tools, and retention under school policy. Keep sensitive details out of broad channels and have responsible staff review the setup.
Yes. Makeform provides unlimited free forms and responses, so you can generate, edit, publish, and collect referrals without a response cap. A paid option is available to remove the Makeform badge, but it is not required to keep using the form.
Add reviewer, review date, contact status, meeting, outcome, and open or closed fields. Test access and keep the teacher's original account distinct from administrative notes.
Require core facts, define behavior and priority choices, show an objective narrative example, and explain when to refer. Test sample submissions with teachers and reviewers before wider use.
Replace scattered referral messages with one clear intake.
