| Four-Year Plans |
|
The screen is where administrators plan each individual student's courses to meet graduation requirements. In high schools this is called a Four-Year Plan, but middle schools should use this feature too, and it doesn't need to be four years. The Plan is also where you review students' Course Requests. Available for Jupiter SIS only.
Subject Rows
Your graduation requirements determine how plans are to be organized into rows by subject areas, such as English, Math, etc., so that must be defined before you can use the Plan screen.
The range of years is determined by your settings on the screen, e.g., grades 9 to 12. It automatically includes 8th grade, for example, if a student took Algebra 1 in 8th grade for high school credit (but only if you save that course grade to the student's transcript). If a student is held back or skips a year, it automatically adjusts the number of years displayed.
The grading periods are determined by your settings on the screen. The last option in the right column lets you select which grading periods apply, such as semesters, trimesters, or just the year-end total. If a student needs to retake some classes during summer school, click the "Add Summer" button on the Plan screen to add a column for any summer.
Click the table cells to add courses. Click courses to change or delete them. Note: First you must designate which courses satisfy which graduation requirements on the screen. The plan automatically includes any courses and grades from teachers' gradebooks and the student's transcript. These classes are read-only; you cannot remove them from the plan. It also includes any course requests so it is easy to modify the plan each year.
Note: The course menus may differ each year if you change your course offerings each year.
To create a default template, select a new student who is not scheduled in any classes and has no transcript yet. If it's the middle of the year and all your students are already scheduled, add some fake students to your database to use for now, one for each grade level. On this student's plan, set all the typical required courses. For electives, select "TBA". Then click the "Default" button and select "Save this as the default...." Note each graduating class has its own template (since course offerings and graduation requirements may change each year), and each school has its own template, so you'll need to repeat this process for one student in each grade level at each school in your district.
The default template applies automatically to any student who does not have a plan yet. If a student already has a plan, but you want to revert it to the default, click the "Default" button and select "Apply the default plan to this student".
It automatically checks the student's planned courses against the graduation requirements and shows their total credits. If all requirements are met, it shows "On Track"; otherwise it shows "Off Track" in bold red and highlights which requirements are not met. You can click the requirements in the left column to see specifically how many credits are required in each subject. If a student fails a required class and no longer has enough planned courses, it shows "Off Track" in bold red, so this is useful to review each term. You can then add make-up classes to their plan, such as summer school, to get them back on track. Note: If a course satisfies more than one requirement, such an Art class counting as either a Fine Art or an Elective, it does not matter which row you place it in. It will count where it is needed, even if it's displayed in the other row.
In addition to graduation requirements, you may select college entrance requirements at the bottom of the screen. This displays the plan organized by the college requirements, and likewise shows if the student is On Track or Off Track. (This is defined on the same screen as graduation requirements.)
The checkbox "Flag for review" (top left) lets you mark any student who needs further attention, for example, to flag several students who have fallen off track. Then you can click the "Next Flag" button to automatically find the next flagged student. In other words, it's like setting a stack of papers aside that you want to review later. (This is just for your own convenience. It has no bearing on scheduling or anything else.) Click the "Reset" link (top left) to either flag or unflag all your students at once. If you are a Counselor or Asst. Principal, this applies only to the students assigned to you (see ). Otherwise it applies to all students. The "Next Flag" button works the same way. So this lets each Counselor/AP work independently.
For example, toward the end of first semester, you might flag all your students. Then click "Next Flag" review each student to see who is failing and falling off track. Leave those students flagged, and unflag the students who are still on track. The "Next Flag" button will loop back through the remaining flagged students so you can conference with them and adjust their 2nd semester schedules as needed.
At the bottom of screen you can identify the student's post-secondary goals, such as Trade School, Community College, State University, etc. This menu can be customized. You may also type notes, such as the student's target colleges or career.
The "Add" menu says just "TBA"
First you must go to the screen to edit each course and associate it with one or more Grad Reqs. Do this for every year. Once that is set properly, the "Add" menu should list all courses associated with that graduation requirement.
The screen is where you choose whether transcripts, and consequently four-year plans, show columns for each quarter, trimester, semester, or just one a year. Remember to check this setting for each year and each track.
If transcript grades are entered without a specific school year, they are displayed in the first column. Edit the to specify the school year, not just the grade level.
Make sure your transcripts have grades for the same terms you specified on the screen. For example, if you set the transcripts to show semesters, but the actual transcript doesn't have anything labeled as 1st or 2nd semester, it simply shows grades in the first column each year.
Double-check the screen to ensure courses are aligned with the correct graduation requirements. Remember that each year has separate course settings, so you must check each year separately. Also double-check the screen to ensure your settings are correct. If a course satisfies more than one subject area, such as an Art class counting as either a Fine Art or an Elective, it is always displayed in the first row even though it may still apply to the second requirement.
If you change the topic areas on the screen, that may cause some TBA courses to move to the "Other" row.
The Plan screen shows the student's courses combined from four different sources: gradebooks, transcripts, course requests, and the plan itself. If there are any discrepancies between these four sources, you will see extra courses. For example, if you planned for the student to take Chemistry, but they changed schedules to Chemistry Honors instead, the plan will show both Chemistry and Chemistry Honors. Simply correct the plan to match the schedule. Likewise correct the if it has the wrong courses.
Dimmed courses indicate that perhaps the student didn't actually take the planned course, so you should update the plan. It does this when the term is already over but the student has no grade. If this appears in error, make sure the transcript and schedule have everything in the correct term.
If you delete a course from the screen, that replaces the course on the Plan screen with "TBA". Edit the plan to change it to a comparable course.
If a course appears on the transcript but not on the plan, that means it doesn't recognize the course. Edit the to make it match the course number and title on the screen. |
