SIS Gradebook
Overview
The SIS Gradebook is a web program that's integrated with the rest of SIS for Web and allows teachers to enter scores for student work in a course and to calculate marking period marks and a final average from those scores. SIS Gradebook is based on the concept of a "gradebook". A gradebook has two basic components:
- A layout
- Scores
A gradebook layout indicates the things students are scored on and how those scores are used to determine the students' marking period mark and final average. The things students are scored on are typically things like homework, quizzes, exams, papers, projects, class participation, and so on. Groups of scored items can be organized together as part of a category. For example, all homework assignments might be grouped into a homework category, and weekly quizzes might be group into a quizzes category. The SIS gradebook provides an arbitary level of categorization so that a homework category might contain a Civil War assignment which might contain indivually scored items for Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. Probably, most teachers won't go to that level of granularity but it is easy for teachers who wish to to do so.
The scores in a gradebook consist of the scores the students received for the items specified in the layout. Since the SIS gradebook is integrated with the rest of SIS, the students in a section will automatically be present in the gradebook for that section so all a teacher will need to do once an item is specified in the gradebook layout is enter the scores for that item. In addition to the simple score, teachers are also able to attach comments to a score, exclude the score for an individual student (for example for a medical absence or family emergency), or indicate some standard qualifiers for the score such as Late or Absent.
Each section in a course has its own gradebook for each marking period and, in fact, there is also a gradebook for the Final Average. The Final Average gradebook will almost always consist of the equally weighted marking period marks but might also contain additional items such as a final project or a Regents Exam (though teachers are generally discouraged from using Regents Exam grades as part of a course grade). Different marking period marks might also be weighted differently though his would probably be very unusual and should not be done casually.
Getting started
To get started using the gradebook, a teacher simply has to select "Gradebook" from the drop-down list in the teacher's list of courses and sections. The teacher will then enter the gradebook for