It's that time of year when tracking and report writing are coming thick and fast. I'm currently in the process of writing 150 Year 9 reports, which is just the tip of the key stage 3 data iceberg looming on the horizon.
I will do a series of posts on how I've found workarounds for things that have taken me time in the past. In this blog, it's about 'effort' grades for homework. I know not all schools require this, but if they do it can be a bit of a nightmare data gathering exercise - so here's where I recommend putting google sheets (or whichever spreadsheet creator you prefer) to work instead.
At the bottom of this blog I have created a short video talking you through how I use these formula, so if visual/audio is better than words, please do scroll on down!
Prep
Whenever my students do a homework I put a 1 in my mark book. This is purely a marker that they have completed the homework, not if they've done it correctly etc. This is purely done because I am asked to inform parents how well they do in their homework tasks.
Formulas to the rescue
I use different formulas to make my life easier. The first is the sum formula. In L3 I ask it to add up all the scores for homework completed to date
=sum(B3:K3)
If you're using google sheets it may well try to fill in the rest of them for you straight away. If it doesn't hover your mouse over the corner of the cell until you see a +, then click and drag down.
Now I know how many homework tasks each student has done I then know which grading to give them. So next I use 'if' formula to look up the grade and put in the appropriate descriptor for their attitude to learning. If statements can be quite complicated to get your head around, but once you have, they're brilliant time saving devices.
So what we want is for it to look up the number in L3 and then put in the appropriate descriptor. I will include my formula below so you can copy, paste and adapt it, but a few things you need to remember:
You need = at the start, so that it know you want it to do the work
You always need to start each instruction with 'if'
Always put a bracket before the cell you want it to look up
>= will tell it to look up if the number greater than
<= will tell it to look up if the number is smaller than
, are used for breaking up the instructions
" " are necessary around what you want it to say
At the end of the formula you need to close all your brackets - so if you've put in 4 instructions, you need 4 end brackets last of all.
I know that's a lot of information in one go, but if you're getting error messages it's usually one of these that is wrong, so use it to trouble shoot.
If the box L3 is greater than the number 8, please put in the word Excellent
If the box L3 is greater than the number 5, please put in the word Good
and so on and so forth.
Finally you will want to copy and paste these words across to your school data spreadsheet. A word of warning here: Don't do normal paste - it will try to copy across the formula and not the words you've chosen.
1. Copy as normal (e.g. ctrl c)
2. Go to edit, paste special, values only (or ctrl, shift, v)
If you have questions please do post them below. If you have even better solutions than what I have come up with, again please comment below. The more we help each other reduce workload the better all our lives will be.
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