This article provides a detailed guide on setting up assessment templates for Double Science in secondary education, allowing teachers to track individual subject marks and overall grades efficiently. It covers the steps for adding assessments, importing templates, managing report cards, and sharing grades with guardians. The article also includes instructions for color-coding marksheets and ensuring timely mark entry.
For double science, where three subjects contibute towards two grades, it can be difficult to track student progress accross all three subjects at once, while monitoring their combined score. With our template setup detailed below, we'll show you how to set up your assessments to track individual subject marks and overall grades all on one marksheet.
In the setup, we've included the overall assessment, which will be used when calcuating Progress 8 and can be used on our Analysis pages, plus a mark and percentage assessment for each subject. These help you track and combine scores when tests may not always have the same maximum points.
To set up your single or triple science assessments instead, just follow the instructions in this article: Setting up a Summative Assessment, or if it's Progress 8, theses instructions: Setting up and analysing Progress 8 Assessments
Once you set everything up using the instructions below, teachers will be able to access marksheets specifically for their subject or can access the combined marksheet.
When creating report cards, you can choose whether to include the individual subjects, or just show the overall grade.
Permissions
- School: Assessments: Administer - Set up assessments
- School: Report Cards: Administer - Set up and manage report cards
If you don't have a permission, you'll need to ask your admin team to give you permission using these instructions.
Setting up the assessments
The first step, like with any assessments in Arbor, is to add them to your site. Set up the overall assessment, and download and import our template Mark and Percentage assessments into your site, ready to add to your Annual Policy to use this year.
Adding the assessments to your site
Go to Students > Assessments > Assessment Framework > Assessment Catalogue and click the Create new assessment button. Select to create a new Progress 8 assessment.
Change the Category drop-down menu to Ebacc and select the Science Double Award assessment. Click the Choose assessment button in the slide over.
Add a shorter name if required, then click Next.
Keep the default grade set selected, then scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Next. Then on the next page click Complete setup.
You don't need to add the assessment to your assessment policy yet - we'll be adding all the assessments to your policy at once.
Instead, select Create new assessment.
Select to create a new assessment. Select to Import template.
Click Browse to select the Double Science Mark assessment templates.
Click Import template.
Review the information, then click the Complete setup button.
If you also want to set up the percentage assessments, click Create new assessment and select the Double Science Percentage assessment templates.
Getting an error when trying to import the percentage templates?
You'll need to set up a percentage grade scale on your site first. Go to Students > Assessments > Assessment Framework > Grade Sets and click the Create percentage scale button.
You can then return to the import to import the percentage template.
Go to Students > Assessments > Annual Policy > Manage Assessments and click the Add assessment button.
Select the students to link the assessment to, and choose how often to assess the students (we recommend termly or half-termly).
Adding baselines and targets
To be able to analyse your overall assessment, you will have needed to input a baseline (to calculate progress) and an Academic Year Teacher Target to get the marksheet to be colour-coded.
You only need to add these in for the Overall Grade assessment, as the percentage and mark assessments are used to help calculate the grade.
To add a baseline and year target for each student, the easiest method is to use our import spreadsheet. You can see how to do this here: Using the import spreadsheet
You can fill in the baseline, year target and final target for each student (what they are expected to get at the end of GCSE). Then follow the instructions in the article above to import the baselines and targets back into Arbor.
Target Judgement rules determine how mark sheets are colour coded, depending on how your students are doing in their assessments relative to their targets.
You can change the default judgement thresholds for your science assessments, so students can be judged as 'on track' even if they're just below what they should be at a certain point in the year. You can see how to do this here: Editing the default Target Judgement Rules or adding more
Marking the assessments using the full marksheet
As well as being able to input marks into the individual assessment marksheets (see how to do this as a teacher here or as an administrator or SLT here), if your assessments are all linked to the same course you can access a full marksheet with all the assessments side-by-side.
- As a teacher, follow these instructions: Teachers - Getting to the summative assessment marksheet and adding marks
- As an Administrator or SLT, follow these instructions: Admin or SLT - Get to the summative marksheet and add or import assessment marks
If you've set up the Mark and Percentage template assessments, you can use these to keep track of the Biology, Chemistry and Physics scores that feed into the overall grade for the assessment period. For example, for summer this student got 80/100 for Biology, 40/50 for Chemistry and 10/20 for Physics. I've input the marks and percentages as such.
To find the overall grade, just find the average percentage then convert this into an overall grade using your schools grading policy. For example, (80+80+50)÷3=70%
Tick the boxes next to the students then click the Bulk action button to select one of the bulk actions - these allow you to input the same marks for multiple students for the same assessment or across multiple columns at once!
You can also import assessment grades using these instructions: Using the import spreadsheet
Use Data Collection Policies to help make sure the Biology, Chemistry and Physics marks are entered on time so you can calculate an overall grade for Report Cards.
You can define the collection deadline, who is responsible for inputting marks and when approvals will take place. Staff will automatically get an alert in the To Do section on their Homepage when it's time to input the marks, or you can send them a reminder.
See how to set up Data Collection Policies here: Manage data drops using Data Collection Policies
Sharing grades with guardians or students
You can share all grades through the Parent Portal, or restrict their view to just a few using Report Cards.
If you use the Parent Portal and Arbor App at your school and have chosen to show progress results, guardians can see student's marks for Double Science.
Guardians can click the View Student Profile button and go to the Progress section of their profile to see all the current and past grades.
If you don't want to make all marks visible, you can choose only to share certain marks on report cards. You can send report cards to parents and students by sending them an email, or by sending it through the Parent Portal or Student Portal.
For full details on settiing up a report card use this article: How to set up a Report Card - we'veincluded a summary of they key steps for Double Science below.
First, set up your report card. Be sure to add your science assessment from the Attainment tab - just click +Add in the Progress Assessments section.
From the Report Cards tab you can click a student's name to view the different attainment sections of the report card.
You can update the current mark (this also updates the mark in the assessment's main marksheet), and mark the entry as complete.
Once all mark entry is completed, and the marks have been approved it will no longer be editable in the marksheet.
You can then share the reports using these instructions: Send Report Cards to parents or students
For example, on the Parent Portal guardians can click the View Student Profile button, and go to the Report Cards section to download the Report Card.
Why are there numbers in front of the assessment names?
The full marksheet will order the assessments from left to right alphanumerically. Labelling them with numbers in this way makes sure they appear on the marksheet in the right order e.g. 1.1 bio, 1.2 bio, 2.1 chem, 2.2 chem.
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