Preparing to Post Grades
Each district/ school will set a designated posting window for each marking period. Outside of the posting window teachers will be unable to post grades. It is important that you first prepare your gradebook for posting:
- Check your gradebook in each class to ensure that all assignments have been entered.
- If you are using category weights, verify that they are set up correctly and the total weighting equals 100%
- Check your gradebook assignments to verify that the due dates fall within the correct marking period dates.
- Check each student’s assignment grades to ensure that all assignments are graded. Mark any exceptions by using * to exclude.
- When reviewing student grades include inactive students to ensure that all students you may need to enter grades for are included.
Gradebook reports contain several useful reports for preparing for grade posting. For example Missing grades, Transferred Grades, Custom Grades and excused grades help you identify students who may need updating prior to posting.
Posting Final Grades
Up to 20 days before the end of the grade-posting window, you will receive a Portal alert indicating the sections for which you still need to post grades.
To access the posting screen you can click on the posting alert or you can click Grades > Post Final Grades.
You will see a list of marking periods at the top of the screen, the current marking period will be highlighted in gray. Make sure the correct marking period for posting is highlighted. Focus will check today’s date against the school calendar’s dates for grade posting and inform you, at the top of the screen, whether you can post final grades—or when you can.
A. Marking Period options are listed here. The marking period selected for posting will have a gray highlight.
B. Click the Use Gradebook Grades link to post the grade that is in the gradebook for All Students
C. Click the individual link to Use Gradebook Grades for Individual students.
D. Manually enter or modify the percent and letter grade here (options available are based on the grading scale assigned to the class)
E. Enter comments here. This option depends on district's settings for comments, you may instead see a select option box where you can choose one or more comment codes or enter longer comments.
F. Select an option from the pulldown for conduct. This option depends on district settings, you may also see grade performance level.
G. Check this box to include inactive students
H. Click Mass Update to mass update comments and conduct on the grade posting screen.
I. Once grades are entered, you have the option to post comments. To use previous comments from the previous marking period, click the Copy Comments from Previous Quarter button.
Click Save to Post Grades.
Important notes
Be sure that each student has been assigned a grade on the grade posting screen, in some cases students may be assigned an “I” for incomplete.
Remember, at the end of a semester you may also need to post Semester 1 grades in addition to 2nd 9 weeks grades. At the end of the year, you may be required to post full-year grades in addition to 4th 9 weeks and Semester 2 Grades. The process for posting grades for these terms is virtually the same as what is outlined above except you will see an option to use averages rather than gradebook grades.
Posted Grades Verification
The posted grades verification report is a great tool to use to allow teachers to verify the posted grades. You can access this report by clicking on Grades > Posted Grades Verification Report.
Select the marking period(s) to include on the report and click update. You can include comments by clicking the comments box in the top right corner.
This report will display the grade that was posted and the gradebook grade for the selected marking period.
Administrators also have access to this report and often use it to validate posted grades.
Grade Changes
Each district has a procedure for requesting grade changes after the posting window has closed. Please consult with your district for an outline of this policy.