Is your school gradebook the only source of information you have about your students’ progress? Of course not. However, the way you structure and store that information does affect your students’ progress; and your own as a teacher.
But what does that mean?
Well, it all boils down to the method you use to keep track of your students’ grades. More specifically, using an efficient method to manage grades helps save time, improves classroom organization and adds up to your teaching success. Read on to find more about it.
Dealing with school gradebook tasks that pile up
As expected, grading is not a one-off process that only takes place at the end of the “school year”. Throughout your academic terms — or whichever way you name your school periods — you’ll need to assess student progress using a wide variety of methods. For example, these methods may be tests, final exams and/or participation and interaction within your classes. And, as expected, you’ll need a representation of that information. That is, you have to keep track of student performance, mainly with grades; or even extensive evaluation descriptions, if needed. And that’s because monitoring such scores helps improve both your teaching methods; and also helps support students’ personal progress.
The school gradebook is, traditionally, a useful tool for teachers; for the reasons we mentioned above. But, even so, measuring progress by focusing on individual scores and on class statistics to evaluate performance may be distracting, in some cases.
Let’s dive into the core of the problem.
When you keep using obsolete methods…
To get an overview of your students’ performance, you’ll need to calculate mean values of grades; and also track these results, from time to time. So, is that all? Well, not exactly. I can almost hear you thinking that it’s just a matter of simple math calculations. And that’s true. But, how exactly do you deal with them? Do you struggle with gradebook templates in excel sheets? Or, much worse, are you trapped in a loop, doing repetitive and tedious paperwork and still working on hardcopy gradebooks? If so, you’ll probably need to have a look at available alternative methods and tools that support tracking grades much more efficiently.
Calculating and tracking grades is, indeed, a hassle when you’re using old-fashioned methods.
It’s like you’re trying to reinvent the wheel, when there are plenty of school gradebook management solutions out there to help do the trick with your school gradebook. DreamClass is one of them; and it helps you track your school grades so much more efficiently than you would with hardcopy gradebooks or with other non-specialized solutions. Read on to find out more about it.
Create your school gradebook online, using DreamClass
Though only by switching to such a solution will you get a good feel of how helpful it could be with your grading process, let’s have a look at how DreamClass can improve your grading process.
Improves workflows and resolves transparency issues
With DreamClass, administrators and teachers will be able to easily create and access gradebooks from their browsers, whenever they need that information. More specifically, administrators will be able to view and edit all gradebooks for all school subjects. On the other hand, teachers will be able to view and edit gradebooks only for the subjects assigned to them. Does that help managing workflows related to school gradebooks? No doubt about it; it’s so much more neat and tidy.
Easily create school gradebooks for all subjects
Now, if you’re wondering whether it’s easy for you and other teachers to keep up with this change, one thing is for sure: there’s nothing to worry about. In short, all you need to do to get started with your school gradebook in DreamClass, is to simply enter your students’ personal details to the system. Next, add your teachers and create your subjects. Then you just enroll students to subjects and/or classes, assign your teachers to classes and subjects and you’re ready to create the school gradebook; for each one of these subjects separately, too! And the best part is that all this process only takes a few minutes.
Automated calculations
With DreamClass, you don’t just have an online representation of your hardcopy gradebooks. All calculations once made by hand are now automatically made for you. In particular, once you enter student data, you’ll have the related mean values calculated; which will give useful performance-related insights. Students’ average for all marking periods, class average and students’ average per marking period are some of the grading data you’ll be able to get, once you enter grades in your school gradebook for a class.
DreamClass more than a school gradebook tracking system
With an online grade-tracking system such as DreamClass, you’ll make school gradebook management a piece of cake. And on top of that, school gradebook functionality is only one of the many features you’ll enjoy, by using this kind of software in your school. DreamClass also serves as a school management system and offers you a host of extra features, such as the following:
- Manage student information
- Monitor attendance records
- Manage timetables
- Manage curriculum from a distance, and many more
Upgrade your grading method, for free
Why struggle with grade calculations when you can use this time to focus on designing valid and reliable exams, improving your teaching method? All you need is to do is set up your account and let automated calculations do the work for you. Try DreamClass today, for free, and see how you can speed up your grading for yourself!
