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.

Scroll past the video to access the written information.

Audio Transcript

Let's explore entering extra credit in the Gradebook. You're going to navigate to the Menu, Teacher Access, Gradebook, and then Gradesheet. If you're taken to a particular gradesheet, you can click the Class List option in the top right and then select the tile for the appropriate class. One way to enter extra credit is to create an extra credit assignment worth zero points. We can see here in the header this assignment has a point value of zero. What we're going to want to do is Mass Score this assignment to set it to No Count for all our students. Then when students complete extra credit, we can Enter Scoring Mode, and we can enter in their extra credit points and remove the No Count flag for that student, and then we can click Exit Scoring Mode, so now you'll notice that this student has seven points of extra credit. Now you've learned how to enter extra credit in the Gradebook.

Let's explore entering extra credit in the Gradebook. You're going to navigate to the Menu, Teacher Access, Gradebook, and then Gradesheet. If you're taken to a particular gradesheet, you can click the Class List option in the top right and then select the tile for the appropriate class. One way to enter extra credit is to create an extra credit assignment worth zero points. We can see here in the header this assignment has a point value of zero. What we're going to want to do is Mass Score this assignment to set it to No Count for all our students. Then when students complete extra credit, we can Enter Scoring Mode, and we can enter in their extra credit points and remove the No Count flag for that student, and then we can click Exit Scoring Mode, so now you'll notice that this student has seven points of extra credit. Now you've learned how to enter extra credit in the Gradebook.





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.