Gradebook
UPrep's preferred gradebook tool is the one integrated in Schoology, which offers several attractive benefits for teachers and students:
- The gradebook is automatically populated when you create your assignments, meaning you do not have to maintain a separate gradebook.
- Your feedback to students will be linked to the assignment directly so it is easy for them to see your comments or score.
- As many classes already use the gradebook, students will likely be familiar with how to navigate it and see your comments.
- Students and parents frequently cite the gradebook as one of the most helpful tools in supporting students' performance in class, and in particular tracking overdue or missing work.
Please consider these guidelines:
- Publish grades to students either:
- In your class if useful for discussion or feedback sessions, or
- Outside of school hours, so as not to pull students' attention from their other activities.
- If you want to weight certain assignments by either term, or category, do this at the beginning of the course as much as possible. Changing weighting during the term may change a student's grade in a way which is surprising to them.
- Familiarize yourself with the options to show or hide overall grades in the Grade Setup screen according to your preferences. In Middle School, please disable all overall grades (a percentage output) so as not to confuse students with an "overall percentage grade" which is in contrast to our Standards-Based Grading.
- Take a few minutes in your class to orient students to where you will post feedback. You may wish to leave specific, detailed feedback on the assignment submission, for example, or high-level summary comments in the gradebook. You may use either, both, or neither of those options, but please be consistent and communicate your intent to students.
- Familiarize yourself with Gradebook Exceptions (Flags), as they are convenient tools to communicate necessary information to students.
See Grade Setup for how to copy your grading structure to another course, and Schoology Requirements for gradebook backup and accuracy requirements that apply regardless of how you grade.
To learn more about the Schoology Gradebook, please see the materials below, or e-mail June.