Skyward: Elementary Report Cards - Double Checking Your Grades

This (2015-16) school year, PPS has made a few adjustments to our elementary gradebook.

We are using year long trending. This means that the final Q4 grade will take into account all events from the first day of school until the end of the academic year. Don't be surprised when you see suggested grades showing up in Q2, Q3, and Q4 as soon as the Q1 suggestion appears.
Skyward will not begin to suggest a trend grade until three or more event scores are entered for a particular skill.

These changes will help improve the overall suggested grade because it will take into account growth from the entire school year and it will provide more data points in order to make the suggestion. That being said, it is still the professional responsibility of the teacher to double check the scores each quarter to make sure what the gradebook is suggesting aligns with how the child is performing on that particular skill.

Skyward makes this a fairly painless process.

First, click on the Standard Code in the Skill header (the striped heading box).

Second, double check the grades by looking at the Mean and Median scores, as well as the overall progression of the grades. If you see something, like in the example below, that does not "look right", you can usually figure out why from the event scores.

Third, if you decide the grade needs to be adjusted, you can do so by typing the correct grade in the white box. Once you are finished adjusting any scores, make sure you click Save.

NOTE: Even if you do not have three event scores, you can always manually enter in a score for that skill by following the manual entry directions.

Google Docs: Fonts for Early Elementary

Sample of search results from fonts.google.com A couple weeks ago, I was sitting in a training with a bunch of my favorite lower elementary teacher friends, and several of them were lamenting the fact that it is hard to find "good" Google fonts for the little people they work with on a daily basis. Specifically, it is a challenge to find the single story lower case a and the open 4 . This conversation, of course, sent me out on a mission to remedy this for these fantastic people. So, the next day I put on my headphones, turned up the tunes on Spotify, and dived into the website fonts.google.com . This website lists all the Google fonts available. It also allows you to type in your own letters and numbers and see them in all the various fonts. For my purpose, I typed in "abckgy 1234 This is the font." From here I could see all 877 fonts, and look specifically for the a and the 4. It was quite an adventure, and I came across a lot of really awesome font

It's time to change your password!

There are several times a year when it is important to change your password. Your password will expire every 90 days. When your windows computer informs you that your password will be expiring soon, CHANGE IT THEN! It is also always a good idea to change your password before going on break so that you do not get locked out of your computer, email or gradebook. Here is how you change your password from the school windows computers. On your Windows desktop/TEC computer , press the Alt, Ctrl and Delete buttons at the same time. Click on "Change a Password" on the menu below: Enter your username, if needed, and follow the directions on screen. If you are off site or working solely on a Chromebook , you can use the VDI (Virtual Desktop) to change your password. Simply go to vdi.portageps.org. Click "VMware Horizon HTML Access." Click "Accept." Login with your portage username (leave off the @portageps.org) and password. Click "Login." Cli

Skyward Tech Tip: Unlocking a Closed Grade Period

Have you recently attempted to change a grade from last quarter only to be met with the statement “ This Grade Period is closed for Grade Entry “? This occurs because the date for the end of a marking period or quarter has past and that grading period has been locked in the Skyward Gradebook. Below you will find the process for changing term grades, assignment scores, and other information from past grading periods. Google Docs Version Go to your gradebook Let’s start with the gradebook for the class where you need to make a change. In this example, we will be adding a score to a missing assignment and removing the incomplete grade from the quarter grade. (Note: The process to open or unlock the gradebook is the same regardless the change you need to make.) This change will be made for marking period three, Q3. In that marking period column, click on the “Options” dropdown button. From the Options dropdown, choose “Grade Posting Status for Term QX”, whe

PPS Instructional Technology

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