Description: In the article which centers on skyward login, the author talks about some quick shortcuts on how to use Skyward. The purpose of this article is to introduce the user to some of the enhanced features available in Skyward.
Welcome to skyward training, today we’ll be showing you some basics of getting started in skyward, some display options you like to change for personal preference and some others ins and outs of skyward, let’s begin, if you’re in the district, you can access skyward through your teacher Applications folder which looks like this.
This is my preference because it has all of these shortcuts for district users, but if you don’t want to use that, that’s fine as well, you can also go to www.lisd.net, you click on a staff page and go to skyward, you click to enter skyward production database, that’s a live version of skyward.
You log in using your school login test, if you want to take attendance, you click on the left hand side to post daily attendance, but today we’ll be focusing on the gradebook, the first thing want to do is to go to my gradebook and you find whatever class you want to work with.
Today we work with my first period class, it says period 1, 3, 4, it says terms 1, 1, 1, it means that it’s the first nine weeks, if you have a 1 – 2, that means that it’s the second 9 weeks, if you have multiple courses you like to combine, you click this link and follow the prompts from there.
It’s going to open up the gradebook, the first change you want to make and most of all your changes you’ll make will be up here in this tabs, the first change we’ll make is in display options, you will go display options, student display, the default setting for it is the short which unfortunately only has 5 characters per first name, five characters for last name.
Typically what I do is last and first name but it’s up to your own individual choice, for sake of this lesson I’m going to suppress the names and ID numbers, you can change add display options for student ID number, if you want to see your students who have dropped and what school they go to, you have a course that involves scenes from multiple campuses.
You can sort it by first name, last name, whatever your preference is, after you make your changes, you press save, the next thing we’re going to look at is in categories, the category titles are set by the district but you can change the percentages based on whatever your departmental requirements are.
In order to change the categories for your grades or for your assignments, you click the categories tab, you can go to add edit categories, I already have mine set up, but it gives you the options for your categories, these are the default one set up by the district, you cannot change the names of them but you can’t change percentage of them.
For example my class major grades are worth 60% of the grade and minor grades with 40%, you check off the ones you want to use, you change their weight there, then you press save, after you have two categories you want, you can also use these categories for my other classes.
They’ll apply to other classes as well, next thing you can look at is that you can also change display options on how the assignment looks, if you go to do an assignment, you go to add assignment, you change whichever category your project is, you give a little description.
We’ll do my first major speech, this will be the have to speech, you can give a detailed description if you like but you’re not required to, you can improve your assignment, this sign date is when you put it into skyward, the proposed due date is when it’s originally assigned to be due, this is important because in this family access view or the student view, they are able to see in a calendar form when assignments are due.
It’s important to have accurate dates, for example this speech was not going to be due until September, you go back and change actual due date, but initially you could propose today, you could change the scores, you can multiply if your some assignments are worth more than others.
For example if your some assignments worth two points or two times the weight, it’s sieve clicking score, you want to select drop down as percent, otherwise it will give you a score of a 200 rather than hundred, I don’t think it impacts extra percentage grade but it will impact how it’s viewed on the screen.
Once you have that squared away, you can also have comments shown for the assignments, be aware these comments you post here will be seen by the students and parents as well, if you also notice that post the family access and post the student access are both checkmark and are grayed out which means you cannot change those that means everything you posts here that the family and the students are able to see.
You can go save and add another, save and go back to previous screen or save and score, we’re go save and score, for scoring your assignments currently my students are hidden, it has different options, if you want to put a grade in for everyone who has the same grade with you can click it over here, you can apply it.
They’ll add it to your scores or you can make modifications over here to the right-hand side descriptions, there’s a little column, you can check from the scene, this indicates that the students missed an assignment but it has no impact on the students actual grade.
These codes over here impact students grades which are absent missing or M zeros, if you make any check marks here, make sure you uncheck them before you try to post a grade otherwise the grades and times don’t work that way.
This column is where you put the special codes, as you see it automatically posts to our students and families, I want to put a hundred in for a student here, I make my changes, I press save, they’ll take me to this screen, this screen is considered a great screen from assembler you can put grades in here.
You can post grades in that stream, what you want to do also though this screen is that these blue columns are the default columns, they’re based off, for example 1p1 equals the first three-week grade, 1 p2 is a second three-week grade, 1 PT is the nine-week grade.
This is the final exam grade and this is the overall grade, that’s set by the district, we can’t change that, we post a training later on, I have a pink gray 4 minor and a purple grey 4 major, the skyward automatic color code is based on the preset categories by the district.
You can see grades there, that shows you different ways, if you want to see the whole grade sheet, you’ve got a grade period display, this is where grades are posted, you can show for the whole nine, we can show for the first three weeks, you can change the range of dates.
However if you want to do that, be careful you hide all, be aware of that, be careful in hiding, quick scoring is the equivalent of the Great all screen, this is where you can have all the assignments posted, if you don’t have any special codes or unique circumstances, you can click on this way.
That’s a way sometimes I like, I see how all the grades are lining up, for sake of the posting I will do this in a later lesson for posting is different than submitting, it’s the same concept, it’s a passive submitting, I’ll cover that in the future, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.