Sharing Comments with parents

Posted on October 23, 2011 by Stuart Johnson

The comments in ClaSS find many and varied uses in different schools. They prove popular because they are a quick and easy way to record incidental bits of information about a student for future reference and without any extra effort to share that information with other staff.

Now its just as easy to use those comments to communicate with parents, to send home timely information about a student’s activities, behaviour or academic information in school. A “Share with parents” option is now available on the comments form to any staff who have responsibilities at the year level or above.

The option can be used to share comments from other teachers once they have been reviewed for correctness. They are marked as shared in the InfoBook list in ClaSS:

In ClaSSic the same comments are available to parents under the new Comments link:

The comments are displayed for the parent with the profile photo of the teacher posting alongside and with the option to write a reply comment by clicking on the title line:

Registration Notices

Posted on October 9, 2011 by Stuart Johnson

Those paper slips stuffed in the morning register and lost scattered on the way to registration can now be replaced with the new Notice function in ClaSS. Intended for the events of the day, either to be read out to students during registration or just for the teachers information, a notice pop-up appears when a teacher first accesses the Register tab on a morning:

A Notice can be shared across multiple registration groups by checking them in the list of registers on the Completed Register page. Then press the Notice button at the top to write the message and schedule the day it is to be active. There can be multiple messages added for the same day for the same group if needed.

Homework Reminder

Posted on February 2, 2011 by Stuart Johnson

Recording homework in the MarkBook has two main advantages. First and foremost it helps parents see what homework their children should be doing. It does this by listing the homework details like date due, description and any references through to the the parent portal ClaSSic: you fill out the details when you create the homework column in your MarkBook and the synchronization with ClaSSic does the rest.

Secondly for teachers it allows, at a glance, a comparison of when work was set and collected with the attendance record of each student. So, you know who really did miss that piece of homework because they were out of school.

If you’ve not recorded homework before then here’s a brief instruction sheet: Setting homework guide.

The Green Tick for Targets

Posted on October 4, 2010 by Stuart Johnson

Student targets have been given a higher profile through the the Green Tick for Targets which now sits alongside the Merit Star for every student. These are visible in all student lists, across Register, Info and MarkBook. All staff have access to this and clicking on the Green Tick gives immediate access to the current Target sheet for a student:

It is expected that form tutors are usually responsible for entering and updating Targets and this is done through the student profile page in the InfoBook. An instruction sheet is attached: student_targets

Training event in Madrid: ClaSS Assessment Management

Posted on May 5, 2010 by Stuart Johnson

Location: King’s College School La Moraleja in the ICT suite

When: Monday 10^th at 14:30 – 16:00

Audience: Anyone who might associate their responsibilities with the job titles Curriculum and Assessment Manager or Director of Studies.

We’ll look at how assessments are defined and managed in ClaSS, cover grouping assessments into profiles for tracking student progress and learn to make use of the tools for defining the assessment structure for a course for a full year. New features for generating reports from assessment profiles will be covered.

To access the training sites: Group 1 and Group 2

Attendance Summaries in full

Posted on April 26, 2010 by Stuart Johnson

Full attendnace report for a student

The summary button in the register now generates a full attendance report for a pupil. This includes both day-by-day attendance marks for the whole year and some overall statistics for absences and lates. If the same is needed for a previous year or a precise date range then you can use the Attendance option in the Report book.

GCSE Performance Analysis

Posted on January 15, 2010 by Stuart Johnson

The assessment profiles in ClaSS provide a means of grouping and organising assessments in the MarkBook. Their fundamental function though is to allow for reporting and analysis of student grades and they accommodate any kind of custom template to achieve this. A new template has just been completed for analysis of GCSE grade performance. Developed in consultation with academic staff in one ClaSS school its now available to other schools on request.

Subject level analysis of A*/A and A-C performance.

It provides for both student level monitoring of A*/A and A – C grades at regular intervals during the course, and for summary percentages of A*/A and A* – C at subject level.

View the full example of the sheet gcse_attainment_analysis.

Compare with the custom template performing the same function at Key Stages 1 and 2, and it gives an indication of how flexible and powerful the templating system can be.

Messaging and more

Posted on December 10, 2009 by Stuart Johnson

A major upgrade to messaging is now available with ClaSS 0.9.11. It’s a complete rewrite behind the scenes which dramatically improves the speed and functionality of sending mass emails and SMS texts to parents and for the first time, students. Available to Office and Admin users working in the InfoBook, the most requested addition is that emails can now be accompanied by attachments.

Options for messaging parents and students

The options are also there to filter the recipients so that only one message is sent per family group or to send one per each contact, so both mother and father receive the message. The same filter options are also now available when generating address labels.

The email messaging allows an attachment of a reasonable size and its more than recommended that the file is a PDF. If you don’t already PDF then you can grab a free copy of PDFCreator to easily convert any Office document.

Progression across Key Stages 1 and 2

Posted on December 1, 2009 by Stuart Johnson

Attainment grid for Year 1

Tracking attainment within the MarkBook has been done for a while now by grouping related assessments together as an “Attainment Profile”. Well new charting functionality has been added to these profiles which makes it much easier to get an overview of the results for a class or even a whole cohort. A great example is the chart used at Key Stages 1 and 2 and shown in the screen-shot.

The example plots the results of four assessments over the course of a year for one class where the size of the dots on the grid indicates the number of students achieving at a given NC Level. The progression over the year (going from bottom to top) is immediately revealed by the shift in the dots from left to right with more students achieving higher levels. The coloured backgrounds act as a guideline with white indicating the target achievement band.

The new charting functions allow for many different kinds of plots and even for a degree of interactivity. In case of the KS1 and KS2 grids you can see demonstrated in the training video how this has been used to highlight individual students within the context of the cohort.

The Merit Star

Posted on September 24, 2009 by Stuart Johnson

You may have noticed that there’s a new little gold star on ClaSS. It pops-up if you leave the mouse cursor hovering next to a student name in the MarkBook, Register or InfoBook This is the new merits function about which their is a very brief description in the ClaSS Manual.

It requires the minimum amount of information to be recorded to make it as quick as possible – just the activity or area which the merit relates to and the number of points awarded. There’s an optional space for more detail to record your commendation if needed.

The merit points can be tied into a house system and there is a more detailed description about managing the houses.

The merits window currently reports a running total for the individual student and their relevant house total. We’ll be adding full reporting for highest scorers etc. later next month.

If your school is interested in adopting the Merit Star and you didn’t participate in the initial consultation phase then just get in touch. All that needs to be confirmed is the list of “Activities” which you want in the selection box and the points scheme you use. For instance, you may or may not be interested in using demerits. I’d suggest it as a solution for tracking low-level problems like uniform, as ClaSS can generate analysis for anyone of those individual “activities”.

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