Let’s say you wanted to produce the following report card. How would you go about doing it?
One way of accomplishing this type of report card is via Subject-Specific Criteria Templates discussed here. With subject templates, teachers enter grades directly into the report cards. This is helpful for non-numeric assessments like “O” for “Outstanding”, “S” for “Satisfactory”, and “N” for “Needs Attention”.
If you’d like to use a Standards-Based Gradebook, where you assess each standard using a set of assignments, which then transfer automatically to the Report Cards, then there’s another option discussed below.
Setup Overview
Here are the steps you need to be aware of when setting up standards for the report cards and gradebook:
- The Basics: Setting up Standards and Standard Sets
- Standards and Report Cards
a. Assigning Standard Sets to Subjects
b. Configuring Standard Sets for Report Cards
c. Configuring the Report Cards for Standards - Standards-Based Gradebook
a. Add Standards the Gradebook
b. Transferring Grades to the Report Cards
The Basics: Standards and Standard Sets
So in order to use standards, you’ll first need to create Standard Sets, which is simply a set or group of Standards. Under the “Standards” menu, click on “Add New Standards Set” enter the Name and Description of the Standard Set.
Once you’ve created the Standard Set, it will appear in the table below:
Click on “Edit” under the “Edit Standards” header to add/edit Standards for that Set. A current list of standards for that set will appear.
You can use “Add Standard” to add new standards, or use the “Import” function to bulk add Standards. You can also click on an existing Standard to edit it. When editing or adding standards manually, each Standard should have it’s own ID and Description:
Now that you’ve configured all your Standard Sets, you can move to the next step.
Standards and Report Cards
In order to set up the Report Cards to use Standards, you’ll need to do 3 things, each of which will be discussed in greater detail below:
- Assign/link the Standard Set to Subjects
- Configure the Standard Set for the Report Cards
- Configure the Report Cards for Standards
Assigning the Standard Set to Subjects
If you remember, when setting up Standard Sets, there were additional fields that were available to you. You’ll need to use these fields in order for the Standards to appear in the report cards. Start by clicking on “Edit” for the Standard Set, and then fill in the Academic Years, Grade Levels, and Subjects fields:
Note that you can select multiple Academic Year, multiple Grade Levels and multiple Subjects.
OPTIONAL: Once subjects have been assigned to Standard Sets, you can use the “Add mapped standards to Gradebooks” button to pre-populate all Standard-Based Gradebook with the Standards that you’ve configured above:
This will save each teacher the step of selecting Standards for the Gradebook.
Configuring the Standard Set for Report Cards
Once you’ve specified subjects for a Standard Set, you should now configure how the standards within that Standard Set should appear in the report cards. This is done by configuring Standard Set groupings. Click on “Edit” under the “Edit Groupings” column. Any existing Groups will appear in the table below:
Simply click “Add Group” to add a new group, or click on an existing Group to edit:
From here, there are several options available. In addition to specifying the Name, you can specify the following:
- Sort Order: Specify a number that determines the order in which this group appears in relation to other groups within this Grouping
- Is Active: Check this box if you’d like to use this enable this group for any existing Report Cards
- Show Header in Report: Check this box if you’d like the Group name to appear at the top of the group on the Report Card. This is mostly useful if you have multiple groups within the Grouping. Otherwise, it’s best to leave it unchecked, so that the subject name acts like a group header for the standards.
- Add Standard: Select any standards that you want to appear within this group. Note that you do not need to select all standards. But only selected standards will appear in the Report Cards
For each Standard, there is an “Edit” link under the “Merged Standards” column. Use this feature to apply additional standards that don’t appear in the report cards, but whose grades would be included in the calculation of a selected Standard. In the example below, when the report card will only display the Standard labelled “Phonics”, but when calculating the grade for this standard, it will average the Phonics “RF 1.1” standard with “C 1.2” and “C 1.3”.
Configuring the Report Cards for Standards
The final step in this section is to configure the Report Cards to use the Standard Sets that have been configured per the steps above. And all you really need is to select an appropriate template that supports standards. I recommend “Three Four Galore”:
Alternatively, you can request an add-on service and have a custom report card template customized specifically for your school.
Once the a report card is template is selected, feel free to further configure the elements within the report cards:
Once these steps are done, the report card is ready to receive grades from teachers. Note that teachers are able to enter grades directly into the report cards (just like they do with the Subject Template version of a configured Report Cards). However, the main advantage of this approach is to allow teachers to use the Standards-Based Gradebook to continuously assess and transfer grades automatically when the marking period rolls around. The next section describes how teachers should use the configured Standards in the Standards-Based Gradebook, in order to facilitate transfer of grades to the Report Cards.
Standards-Based Gradebook
So if you’re using the Standards-Based Gradebook, and you’d like your grades to be automatically transferred to the Report Cards, you’ll need to use the existing Standards that have been configured for the Report Cards (see “Report Cards” section above). Only grades linked to standards that have been configured for the Report Cards will transfer automatically.
It’s worth noting that in the Standards Based Gradebook, teachers do have the option of creating their own standards. These standards, because they are created manually by the teacher, will not be reported to the Report Cards, and thus grades for these standards will remain solely in the Standards Based Gradebook.
Adding Standards to the Gradebook
To add a Standard (or set of Standards) to the Gradebook, click “Add Standard”, and use either “Method #1” or “Method #2” to select/add a standard set or standard for your Gradebook. “Method #3” is for creating a custom standard that will not be used in the Report Cards.
In some cases, the pre-created standards will be automatically added to your Standards-Based Gradebook (See “Assigning the Standard Set to Subjects” above):
Transferring SBG Grades to Report Cards
So once a Report Card session has been created, all you need to do is access the Report Cards for your students, either using the main “Report Cards” menu, or the “Subject-Based” screen, to confirm the grades that have been created:
The grades from your Gradebook will automatically appear in the Report Card screens. You can override the grades here if needed. And then, simply save the grades, and you’re all set.
Please note again that only grades linked to standards that have been configured to appear in the report cards will transfer over.
18AK0314