Separate Term Gradebooks and a Cumulative Gradebook
Goal: Create a gradebook for each individual marking period, plus an over-arching cumulative gradebook that contains the assignments and grades from all of the marking periods. This cumulative gradebook can then be use to determine an overall grade for multiple marking periods.
Example: I teach a semester-long class but require two separate quarter gradebooks. The final grade is simply the two quarter gradebooks combined into one with no special weighting.
Create Your Gradebooks
Since School Loop will start you off with a default gradebook, it is easiest to use this as your first marking period's gradebook by simply editing the name and date range. To do this, locate the Course Center for your class from either the links in your Dashboard or the Course Centers menu in the navigation bar at the top of your Portal page. Once inside the Course Center, you will find the Gradebooks section in the left-hand column toward the bottom. To edit your initial gradebook:
- Click Edit next to the gradebook.
- Alter the name to reflect that it will contain the first quarter grades only (e.g. "Spanish 1 Q1").
- Edit the start and end dates of the current gradebook, if necessary, to correspond to the first and last day of your first quarter.
- Click Submit.
- Republish grades if there are any previously published grades in the gradebook.
Next, you will need to create a second gradebook that will hold your second quarter's grades. Click the Add New Gradebook button in the Gradebooks section of the Course Center.
In the Name field, title this gradebook to reflect the second quarter (e.g. "Spanish 1 Q2"). Set the start and end dates to reflect the first and last day of the quarter, and click Submit to create your new gradebook. (Note: You can create as many successive gradebooks as are needed, depending on the structure of your school's marking periods.)
Finally, you need to create a cumulative gradebook that will contain all of the grades for both quarter-long gradebooks.
- Go back to the Gradebooks section of your Course Center, and click Add New Gradebook.
- Give this gradebook a name that indicates that it contains the entire semester (e.g. "Spanish 1 Cumulative").
- Set the start date as the day before the start date of your first quarter gradebook. This will ensure that your first quarter gradebook shows by default during the first quarter.
- Set the end date as the same end date of your second quarter gradebook.
- Click Submit.
This cumulative gradebook contains all of the assignments and grades for the entire semester. You can always go back and access individual quarter gradebooks from the Course Center, if necessary.
Hint: We recommend that you run your gradebooks back-to-back without any days between gradebooks. For example, if the 2nd quarter starts on October 16, you should end the previous gradebook on October 15. If there are dates between your gradebooks and you create assignments that are due on those dates, they will not show in any of your gradebooks.
Notes
Gradebook Settings
Keep in mind that each gradebook can have its own unique settings so it is important that you check the settings for each gradebook created.
Grade Export
For those using School Loop's Grade Export (an optional feature in School Loop Plus), you should also keep in mind that you will have the option to choose any of your gradebooks as the source of grades to submit. When submitting grades for second semester, for example, be sure to select your second semester gradebook as the source of grades. Some schools require multiple grades per student for certain marking periods (e.g. a second quarter grade and a semester grade). Multiple gradebooks makes such submissions a snap since our system allows you to choose different gradebooks as the source for the various grades you need to submit.
Publishing Grades
Parents and students will only see the grades you publish. When publishing from multiple gradebooks over the course of a term, students and parents will see a "Current Grades" progress report, which consists of the grades you publish from the current gradebook. If you had published grades from other gradebooks, those progress reports are available to students, parents and teachers via the All Progress Reports menu when viewing the current progress report.
