Sapphire Beginning of Year Setup

Within your grade book, click on the options  (three lines icon) on the left and select preferences.

This section impacts what you see in the grade book. Take note of:

Decimal places: How many decimals you want to see displayed in your grade book. The grade card shows no decimal places.

Highlight Grades At or Below:  Usually 60, but you can set this to whatever you want. It only highlights it in your grade book. Not the community portal.

This section impacts how grades are calculated. Take note of:

Blank grade will be marked: This impacts how blank grades are handled. We recommend Excused. That way new assignments do not negatively impact grades. Excused until due date is not recommended since the grade will turn to a 0 on the day it is due.

Incomplete grades will be marked: This is your choice. If you leave it at excused. Student may not be motivated to hand in the assignment since it is not negatively impacting their grade.

This section impacts what parents and students see in the web portal. Take note of:

Left Column:

New Assignment Visibility: Make sure this is set to Show new assignments.

Middle Column:

Hide Blank Excused Grades: You want to make sure this is set to Off. If you set blank grades to be excused in the previous section, they will not show as assigned in the portal if this is on.

Right Column:

Category Percents: Turning this on allows parents to see the percentage of each category. This heads of some potential questions.

This section relates to saving your preferences to other sections and classes and importing them from other sections and classes. Items to take note of:

Export Saved Preferences to: Select your other sections and classes to save time.

Import Preferences: You can import from previous years. Make sure you still double check because some preferences change or are added from year to year.

To get to your categories page from your main gradebook click on the My Class icon (Person in front of chalkboard) and select categories.

This shows you your categories and percentages (if you have them).

For setup note that the default category is a place holder. Once you have entered other categories you can delete it.

If you use percentages it is very important that you make sure the total is 100% when you are done setting up categories.

This section relates to settings for an individual category. Items to take note of:

Applies to Marking Period: You want to make sure that you have all marking periods selected to save you time later in the year.

Applies to Sections: You want to make sure you are applying it to all of your sections and adding in other classes if you need to. Again, to save you time.

Percent of total grade: This is where you add in your department percentage if you have it.

To add the community web portal grade to your view in your grade book, find the Columns button towards the top of the page.

Click on the down carrot next to student to see all of the student columns you can add (or take away) scroll down.

After all the custom columns, you will see the CWP Grade Total (*** Please note this is now called the SCP Total) option. Click on it to add it.

This is an important column to have in your grade book. It allows you to see if there is something different in the community web portal then you are seeing in your grade book This gives you a chance to correct it before you get parent emails.

Within your grade book, click on the options  (three lines icon) on the left and then select Grade Mapping.

To make a new grade map select New in the upper right.

Put in the characters you want to type. For my new incomplete map I will use Inc.

Select what type it will be. Points is the most common and I will set the value to 0.

Another common map is for missing work. You would do the same setup.

The Description is important because it appears on the Community web portal page and helps parents understand what is going on. When done select Add. Don't forget to then hit Save in the upper right on the home screen when done adding maps.

For grade mapping, it is not as easy as selecting all other sections and courses. However, you can import them from other sections, courses or years.

Start by selecting Import on the right.

Again you have a choice of Year, Course or All. Choose whichever one works for you.

Select where you would like the maps to come from. Make sure you select a location that has the maps you want.

You will get a final confirmation of what you are doing. Select Import to continue.

Important Note:  I don't know if it was just me, but I then got this dialog. You need to select cancel to keep your imports.

You will then need to import into each class and each section.