Extra Credit

You can use extra credit in your classes to provide students with additional means to improve their grades. Extra credit is tracked on the Gradesheet for the class it is applied to. If you record extra credit, but it does not appear to calculate into your students' grades, it is due to the Calculation Settings set administratively on the Entity Group Configuration of the Gradebook module.

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Audio Transcript

Using extra credit in your classes allows you to provide your students with an additional way to improve their grades. Within Teacher Access, let’s head over to the Gradesheet within the Gradebook module. If we’re taken to a particular gradesheet, we could select the Class List option to choose the appropriate class’s tile for the gradesheet we want to view. One way to enter extra credit is to create an extra credit assignment worth zero points, such as the assignment that displays here. Then, we’ll want to initially mass score this assignment so that it’s set as No Count for all our students in this class. That way, we can add points without it affecting their overall grades. Let’s save. Once students complete extra credit, we can click Enter Scoring Mode, record their extra credit points, and remove the No Count flag for that student. When we’re finished, we’ll click Exit Scoring Mode. We can then see how those seven points of extra credit affected our student’s grade. Now that you know how to use extra credit, you can be sure students have a way to improve their grades if needed.

Using extra credit in your classes allows you to provide your students with an additional way to improve their grades. Within Teacher Access, let’s head over to the Gradesheet within the Gradebook module. If we’re taken to a particular gradesheet, we could select the Class List option to choose the appropriate class’s tile for the gradesheet we want to view. One way to enter extra credit is to create an extra credit assignment worth zero points, such as the assignment that displays here. Then, we’ll want to initially mass score this assignment so that it’s set as No Count for all our students in this class. That way, we can add points without it affecting their overall grades. Let’s save. Once students complete extra credit, we can click Enter Scoring Mode, record their extra credit points, and remove the No Count flag for that student. When we’re finished, we’ll click Exit Scoring Mode. We can then see how those seven points of extra credit affected our student’s grade. Now that you know how to use extra credit, you can be sure students have a way to improve their grades if needed.



There are three methods you can use to track extra credit in the Skyward software:

You can include extra credit for assignment scores as you enter the scores in the system. When a student earns extra credit in addition to receiving a perfect score on an assignment, you can enter a score that is higher than the assignment's max score. For example, if a student achieved a perfect score on a test and also earned five extra credit points, you would enter their score as 105 on a test worth 100 points. This would cause an orange warning triangle to display. Clicking the triangle will display a message informing you the entered score exceeds the max score, but will not force you to change the score you entered.

You can also track extra credit in a separate assignment with a max score of 0. For example, over the course of the class, suppose students have the option to write independent book reports for extra credit. You can record the points generated by these reports in this assignment. Since the max score is 0, any score you enter will be calculated as extra credit. If you are using Category Weighting, you would want to create a 0-point assignment for each category that you award extra credit for, so that students are not just awarded extra credit in one particular category.
Finally, you can independently track your students' extra credit in either a No Count assignment or outside the software. For example, you can create an assignment and mark it as No Count so you can add points without including them in students' overall grades. This prevents students who do not earn extra credit from being penalized unfairly. Then, you can record all extra credit points students earn in this No Count assignment. If you award extra credit sporadically, such as for good behavior or for answering a difficult question in class, it may be more convenient to keep a record of the points in a notebook or on a blank copy of your gradesheet. In either case, at the end of the term you can take your extra credit record and apply it to students' overall grades by performing a percent adjustment. In order to use this option, your entity must be configured administratively to allow you to make percent adjustments, as defined in the Entity Group Configuration of the Gradebook module.