Schooltool - Grade Book Basics



schooltool - Grade Book Basics

The schooltool grade book feature allows teachers to log and track daily assignments, tests, quizzes etc...for each student and for each subject that they teach.

To access your grade book, click on the grade book icon [pic] on the Classes tab.

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Each class needs to have a grade book set up in order to track your assignment grades. Grade books are year specific. If your grade book has not yet been set up, the View drop down will appear.

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Grade Book Setup

Since grade books are specific to each class, teachers will use their My Home course list to select a class and then build a grade book unique to that class. The grade book will need to be set up for each class before any grading tasks can be performed. *You only need to create 1 grade book per course section for the school year.

There are five steps to creating a grade book. However, once a grade book has been setup, you are able to copy all or part of that grade book to other classes.

• Step 1 – Create a grade book name. It is suggested that you use a common naming scheme such as: Subject + year + period number (Ex: H Theatre-2010-P3)

• Step 2 – Select an averaging method for your grade book (points or percentage)

• Step 3 – Add and configure Categories. You must have at least one category for each grade book. Examples of categories are: homework, tests, projects etc…

• Step 4 – Add attributes to your grade book. Attributes are teacher notes for adjusting grades or assigning varying credit to assignments. Attributes are optional. Examples of attributes are: NC (no credit) Late (late assignment) Ex (exempt) etc…

• Step 5 – Add assignments to your grade book. Assignments can be added at any time and need to be linked to the appropriate categories and marking periods.

Step 1:

Click the Add button [pic] Enter the name for your new grade book and click the Add button [pic] again to add the new grade book.

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Step 2:

Once the grade book has been created, the grade book setup screen will appear. Select an averaging method from the Averaging Method dropdown menu. The options are points and percentage.

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• Default grade book. The default grade book will always be your active grade book. The menu includes all grade books that have been created for this course.

Step 3:

Set up your grade book categories. * You must have at least ONE category in each grade book.

To add categories, click the green Add button and fill in the pink required fields. These fields include the Category NAME - Category Weight (if you weight your categories) and Drop Lowest (if you wish to drop the lowest grade in this category – you may drop the lowest 1,2,3 etc.. grades – You must enter a number in this field to activate this option)

• There is no indicator in the grade book editor that an assignment is going to be dropped because this is calculated on the fly.

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• There are 3 choices for Category Weights:

-Unweighted: You can setup your gradebook using no weighting, HOWEVER, you must still click on the plus sign and create 1 category or you will not be able to add assignments in the gradebook.

-Fixed Weights: You will be setting up your weighted categories for the entire school year.

-Variable Weights: You can set up categories with different weights for each marking period.

• Please remember that this is essentially your grading formula which is equivalent to 100%.

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Step 4:

Attributes allow a teacher to designate if a student gets credit or not for an assignment. Once attributes are added they apply to every assignment in the grade book, but do not need to be added to an assignment if you so choose.

To add attributes, navigate to the Attribute tab. Click on the green Add button and enter the pink required field information. These fields include:

Name (of the attribute) Short name (shortened version of the name to display in your grade book) and Type (the type of attribute assigned to this name)

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Descriptions for the “Type” of attribute:

No credit – a zero will be given for the assignment- this will have a negative affect on the student’s average.

Exempt – the student is exempted from an assignment – this grade will NOT impact the student’s average.

Flag – this attribute has no effect on the grade book. It is a teacher NOTE only.

Point adjustment – applies a point modifier to an assignment (+ or -)

Percent Adjustment – applies a percentage modifier to an assignment (+ or -)

Once you have finished entering the required information, click on the green Save disc[pic] to save your changes. You may continue adding as many attributes as you desire.

Step 5:

To add assignments to the grade book, you must navigate to the grade book editor. Select the grade book editor from the VIEW drop down menu.

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This brings you to the grade book editor page of your grade book. This page displays your student roster for this class as well as any assignments. When assignments have been entered and you add grades to the assignments, your grade book editor will keep track of the students running average in your class. To add assignments, click on the green plus icon from the grade book menu bar.

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On this screen enter the name of the assignment as well as the point (or percentage) value for this assignment. Enter the due date for the assignment (the due date is used to sort your assignments – if the same date is used for all assignments, they will be sorted in alphabetical order). Select the marking period that the assignment is designated for and the category for this assignment. If you have multiple grade books created, you can select additional grade books to add this assignment to.

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Once you have added your assignments they will show up in your grade book in date order or alphabetical order (if all dates are the same). To see the details for the assignments hover over the title on the top of the grade book task bar.

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Once the information is set up for one grade book, you can import the information into additional grade books using the Import From option on the grade book setup screen. You are able to import Categories only or Categories and Assignments

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Districts using Parent Portal:

Please remember to click on “Allow parent access” if you are planning to post the specific assignment for Parents to view.

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