Being a teacher is not easy, aside from the demands of being able to teach and ensure that students understand and learn from the lessons, there are also a lot of additional tasks that are germane to teaching, one of which is grading students based on their performance in the class. Performance can be assessed using tests, exams, projects, assignments, and activities, all of which entail those students being given points or scores which will then be added at the end of the quarter and school year for their grades. Keeping track of the lessons and the submissions of the students is already a handful and checking their work and grading them is something that teachers struggle with. Any form of assistance or support for these tasks by the school management can really go a long way in terms of ensuring that teachers are not overworked and that they can focus more on their teaching and not all those other tasks. As such many have attempted to provide products and services that would help ease the burden of checking and grading student outputs but most of the time the process itself is tedious and will likely frustrate the teachers from using it. With the online classes that schools were forced to adopt due to the pandemic for the past two years, schools had to quickly find ways to make online classes work and software developers were also able to design computer programs that helped school management stay on top of the demands of operating and running a school and helping teachers make the most out of the new learning modality. One of this software was called school management software and an important and useful feature was the grade book. Grade books allow teachers to track and monitor students’ scores in a given quarter or semester and then compute the grades per class depending on the parameters that the teachers have set for that subject. 

What is a grade book? 

A grade book is similar to a class record that a teacher is required to keep and it is the repository of all the scores or points that the student has earned in a class. It is also the basis for the computation of the final grades for a given subject taking into consideration the different requirements, quizzes, exams, and assignments that the teacher has assigned. This used to be done manually by the teacher, either by having a class record or writing the scores for each student in a given class. With the advent of spreadsheets and word processing programs, teachers often utilize such documents as a means of record-keeping but it still has to be entered manually. Grade books on the other hand can be set up to automatically transform raw scores into percentages and to compute grades based on the teacher’s grading system. This automates the entire process and will benefit the teacher as they would not have to spend so much time on the said tasks. The grade book is one of the many features of a suite of programs that comprises school management software and when used together with all the other features it can really be very useful and helpful. For example, the software also allows for the submission of student outputs and when the teacher sets up the criteria for grading, the software can do the checking of the individual outputs, score them based on the scoring guide and record the scores immediately on the grade book. At the end of the term or quarter when teachers have to report grades, the software can also compute the grades and then present them in a report card format which can be customized by the school. This would mean that the teachers would not have to worry about all the checking, scoring, and grading as this can be done for them according to the standards they have for the class.  

How to use grade books? 

Grade books are part of a larger software for the management of online classes and as such requires that it be made available to the teachers. An online platform would allow students to submit their assigned work and the software would keep a record of the date and time it was submitted, which can determine whether it was submitted on time or not. Most teachers would deduct points for late submissions and this can even be included in the settings of the program per task or output. Additionally, the program can also check the quizzes and exams of the students freeing the teachers from this very taxing job. The teachers can also manually inspect and verify that the scores given to the students are accurate before they compute the grades of the students. When the individual scores are deemed in order, the teacher can then tell the program to compute the final grades and a report card for the individual student is printed. The teachers can customize the report cards in accordance with the school’s policies and rules, while teachers, students, parents, and school management have access to each grade book. The teachers can now focus on the important tasks of instructing, teaching, and motivating students to learn. Moreover, the program can return reports every time the teacher wants to examine the performance of the students or class. The teacher can set out alerts for regular reports and they can be used to point out the top students in the class as well as those who are struggling. It can help teachers become responsive to the needs of their students. 

The grade book can be had with the school management software that is cloud-based and the school has to purchase access or pay for a yearly subscription to the program to use it. Due to the changes that the previous pandemic has brought about, many school management software is available on the internet and every program is aimed at providing a much-needed service to make learning and teaching a bit easier and more relevant to both students and teachers.