How do I enter grades and comments? (Lower School)

Start from the Schedule & Performance page in MyWesttown - the default page in the Faculty view.  On the right, you'll see an area labeled "Grading" with several clickable options.  The system's grading setup uses an organizing structure called "Grade Plans." In the Lower School, each Grade Plan is based on the combination of subject, grade level, and term/trimester.

If you are a homeroom teacher, you will see one grade plan for each of the subjects you teach:

If you are a specials teacher, you will see one grade plan for each of the grade levels you teach:

Begin by clicking on any grade plan. On the grading screen, you will see the following elements:

  • A "Grade Plan" dropdown menu you can use to change the Grade Plan you're viewing
  • Tabs for each class section associated with that grade plan
  • A "Bulk Edit" button
  • A list of students

You can enter grades for a group of students using the "Bulk Edit" button, and you can enter grades one student at a time. You will probably use a combination of these two methods.

To enter grades for a group of students:

  • Click on the "Bulk Edit" button.
  • In the Bulk Edit window, click on the "Select All" checkbox to select all the students. You will see that all of the students become highlighted in gray and a set of grading options appears on the right side of the window. (If you want to select a subset of students instead of the whole section, you can click on individual student names to deselect them.)
  • The "Term Section Comment" is a description of the program for that course for that trimester, and it typically applies to all students in the section. To enter your section comment, click the blue "+Add" button to the right of "Term Section Comment." A large text box will appear (you may have to scroll up within the window to see it). Enter your comment in the text box, either by typing directly into the box or pasting the comment from another source.
  • To see additional formatting options (bold, italics, underline), click the three dots at the top of the text box.
  • Once you have entered the full comment, click somewhere else in the Bulk Edit window to save the comment. The box to the left of the "Term Section Comment" label will automatically become checked, and the blue "+Add" button will change to an "Edit" button.
  • If you will not be bulk entering any other grades, you can click the brown "Save & Close" button. If you want to bulk edit any of the individual skills, select the appropriate grade from the dropdown menu for that skill. For example, you may want to enter a grade of "NA" for all students for any skill that was not covered during this semester. Once you have finished bulk editing grades, click the brown "Save & Close" button.

To enter grades for an individual student:

  • Click on the name of the student from the list on the left side of the page.
  • If entering a "Term Student Comment," click the blue "+Add" button to the right of "Term Student Comment".
  • Type or paste the comment into the text box, then click the brown "Save & Close" button.
  • To enter grades for assessment skills, click the dropdown menu to the right of the skill name and select the appropriate item (NA for Not Applicable, S for Secure, D for Developing, B for Beginning). Any item with a red asterisk is required.
  • When entering grades for an individual student, there is no "Save" button. Once you select a grade from the dropdown menu, it is automatically saved.

Marking grades Ready for Review

  • Once you have entered all required comments and grades for all students in a section, click the "Bulk Edit" button.
  • Click on "Select All."
  • Check the box next to "Mark students as ready for review" at the bottom of the right side of the window.
  • Click the brown "Save & Close" button.

Once you have entered all the grades and comments for a class section, repeat the process for the other section(s) within that grade plan. Then use the grade plan dropdown menu to navigate to other courses/grade levels and follow the same steps to enter grades and comments for all the sections in each of those other grade plans.