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Professional Development: Schoology Mini-Workshops: Setting Up Grades for the Gradebook

Grade Setup

***MAKE SURE TO CHECK BOTH BOXES IN VISIBILITY SETTINGS

Grade Setup Guide

Setting Up Grades to Enable Your Gradebook in Schoology
*Schoology will sync with Tyler in the 2021-2022 school year

Step 1: Grade Setup
Use the Grade Setup area (located on left side of courses) to adjust grade settings for your course. In this area, you can manage your Grading Categories, create scales and rubrics, adjust the weights of your grading periods, and enable Final Grade Settings for your student reports. You will only have to do this step one time. After which, you can copy the grade setup settings from one course to another.

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Step 2: Grading Categories
Grading Categories enable you to organize graded items in the course. At least one grading category is required in order for you to use the Gradebook. Common examples of categories include Daily Classwork, Homework, or Quizzes. There is no limit to the number of categories you can create, and you can weight each according to your own definition.

  1. Click Add in the Categories area.
  2. Enter a Name.
  3. Select Total Points as the category calculation method. This is the default that Tyler will use.
  4. Select Drop lowest if you want to automatically drop the lowest grades within that category from each student's overall score in the course.
  5. Click Create to complete.
  6. Schoology Hack: After you have setup your categories, click on the star next to the category you use most frequently. This will become the default category for the gradebook when creating assignments in Schoology.


Step 3: Grading Periods and Weights
Grading Periods are defaulted from when you created your Course. Enabling weighting will display a new Weight field next to each category name. Since Tyler will be your primary gradebook, changing the weighting amounts in Schoology is purely teacher preference. It is important to note that Grading Categories cannot be changed throughout the course without impacting all grading periods of the course. For example, changing the grading category weights for MP3 will also change the calculated grades in MP4

Step 4: Final Grade Settings
The Grading Periods & Final Weights area enables you to view all of the grading periods associated with your course, as well as the weighted percentages of each grading period. Grading periods will be defaulted in to your course.
Final Grade Settings (optional)
Select Numeric to display the overall score as a percentage. Since Tyler is the default gradebook, it is optional for you to calculate grades as "Round Period/Final Grades". The remaining functionalities are teacher discretion:
a) Control Grading Columns in Gradebook adds an additional blank overall grade column to your gradebook in which you can manually enter an overall score for your students. The override column displays to the left of the calculated grade column, and is indicated by the yellow pencil eraser icon. Students only see the score you entered in this column and not their calculated scores. Entering an override grade is optional; the calculated overall grade displays when you don't enter an override.
b) Hide Grading Category score columns display the average grade for each category in your Gradebook. Enabling this option hides category summary grade columns from the Gradebook.
c) Grade Period Override Column adds an override column for each grading period for the course. When enabled, entering an override grade is still optional; the calculated grade displays when you don't enter an override.
d) Total points column adds a column that displays each student's total points earned for the entire marking period. The total points possible for the course displays in the column header. The Total Points column displays to the right of the calculated grade column. This option is useful for university courses that use total points instead of a traditional grade scale.
Visibility Settings (optional):
a) Hide overall grades in student grade report excludes an overall score from student reports and the students' Grades tab in the course.
b) Hide grading period grades in student grade report excludes grading period scores from student reports and the students' Grades tab in the course. You cannot customize which grading period grades you hide or display. Hiding the grading period grade from student reports also hides the category-level grades from the student report.
c) Hide total points achieved in student grade report has been turned off by the district and cannot be selected.

Step 5: Grading Scales and Rubrics

Grading Scales have been defaulted to Numeric by the district. However, you may create Rubrics to score an an assignment, graded discussion, or test/quiz question. To add a rubric:

  1. Click the Add button in the upper right in the Grading Scales section.
  2. Select the Rubric option and fill out the form:
    1. Enter a name for the rubric.
    2. Create titles and descriptions for each criteria.
    3. Use the +Criteria button to create your own rubric criteria
    4. To add additional columns to the scale, hover over the cell and click on the + icon that appears to the left and right of each cell.
    5. To remove a row or column, hover over the cell and click on the X icon that appears in the upper right.
    6. To reorder the rows, click on the double bars to the left and drag it to the appropriate location.
    7. Use the +Learning Objective button to build a rubric using the TEKSs.
    8. Choose State Standards-Essential Knowledge and Skills.
    9. Click on the TEKS you want added to the rubric.
    10. The total points for rubrics automatically adjust as you add rows and columns.
    11. Use the menu items on the upper left to close or hide the rubric.
  3. Click Create to complete.

Grades