Grading

Overview of Grading in Schoology

Every teacher uses their grade book a little bit differently, and that can make it confusing to navigate as a parent attempting to get a handle on how your student is doing in each class. The following is a description of how I use Schoology, a guide for interpreting what you see when you log in, and a suggestion for how you can use it as an effective way to monitor your student’s progress in my class.

I recommend that every parent check grades in Schoology on a bi-weekly or monthly basis in order to keep a handle on a student’s progress. Schoology will show you what your student has earned on past assignments and approximately where they stand in my class at that time. It will show you general patterns in your student’s performance in my class. Be careful not to focus too much on the overall term grade, and instead look more closely at the kinds of assignments your student is doing well (or average or poorly) on. Those general patterns can give you the understanding you need to begin to help your student address any issues they are having in my class.

Here is a link to a parent guide published by Schoology.

Total Point System

I grade using a total point system. That means each assignment is weighted by the number of points I give when I assign it, rather than falling into a category (like quizzes, homework, etc.) which is worth a percentage of the total grade. For instance, a homework assignment might be 10 points and an essay 100 points. When you are looking at Schoology, make sure to pay attention to the point value of the assignment in order to gauge its worth.

By the end of a term, I have assigned, and your student has completed, hundreds of points-worth of assignments. Because of the total point system, the assignments at the beginning of the term cause the overall term grade to vary significantly as they are entered. As the term continues, and more assignments are completed and entered, that significance diminishes, and assignments cause less of a noticeable change in the overall grade. Keep this in mind when you look at Schoology in the beginning of a term especially.

Individual Assignments

I use Schoology as an active grade book. That means I input grades as I assess the work; therefore, it is constantly changing throughout each term. The overall grade is never final until the very end of the term, when all of the work is handed in and graded.

When I give an assignment, I create it in Schoology, so students can see the due date and time. When I collect that assignment, I input a “missing” if a student hasn’t turned it in, which is calculated as a zero, so you can see how that missing assignment affects their overall grade. (Please refer to my late work policies to find out when, and if, that zero can be made up and changed into a grade.) If a student wasn’t present in class when the assignment was due, I input “Absent,” which does not affect the overall average. The student is responsible for submitting the assignment according to our handbook policy. When I grade that assignment, I input the grade, and the grade average will reflect that change. I do my best to remove the missing or absent code when I receive the assignment, even if I haven’t had the chance to grade it. If a student has a 0 on an assignment, that means the student submitted the assignment, but it earned a 0. Generally, this occurs when a student plagiarizes. Please refer to my policies concerning plagiarism for further information about redoing plagiarized assignments. I input “Excused” for assignments that are excused for any reason. This has no effect on the overall grade.

Some assignments take me longer to grade than others. You are likely to see the larger assignments taking me two weeks to grade and enter into Schoology. If an assignment does not have a code or a grade, it means I haven’t graded it yet.

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