Foundations: How my students know their grades NOW!

This is an update to my previous blog post about how I communicate grades to my students.  In that post, I wrote about my dreams of having my master gradebook in Google Sheets completely populate each individual student tracker sheet.  I am happy to announce that my dreams have come true!!!  As soon as I type a skill score (using my 3, 4, 5, 6 scale) into my gradebook, it automatically updates on each students' tracker.  When I got it to work, I felt like a computer genius!!!

Recapping a little bit, below is a view of a portion of my master gradebook for my AP® Physics course.  The top row lists the skill names (APM.1, APM.2, etc) and each value represents a skill score a student earned on in-class assessments and reassessments.  In the light blue row, I note the quiz number to which each score belongs.

Each student has a tracker sheet (also in Google Sheets) shared only with them.  I remain the owner of the sheet!  Below is the tracker sheet of one of my students.  You can see that the first row on my master spreadsheet above matches what you see in this student's tracker below.  Those values automatically populate on this tracker sheet as I type them into the master.  Pretty cool, huh!?  The only cells the students have edit access to on their tracker are the ones outlined in pink.  The students can type in potential reassessment scores and see how their overall average changes. This tool helps them decide whether a reassessment is worth it and what skills should be reassessed.

By using the importrange function, the Script Editor, and lots of Find/Replace in Google Sheets, I created an automatically updating tracker sheet for each student!!

Thanks to this system, I have productive, efficient discussions with students.  We get right to the skills they need to work on and put a plan in motion for success!  The students know their grades and know their options for improvement.  They have the control. This grading transparency truly frames grades as a tool! Love it!