If you're here for the free assessment spreadsheets, scroll down.
At Base, we're all about using the right tool for the job. The science supports using a hard copy teacher planner for organisation, clarity and teacher wellbeing, but for tracking and analysing student data? Not so much.
As an experienced teacher, here are my gripes with the hard copy marks section you usually find at the back of teacher planners:
1) They're too STATIC which means they can't adapt to your students throughout the year. If you want to change a student’s grade after moderation, add a student to your class list or add another formative task before the summative, your page ends up looking like an absolute dog's breakfast.
2) They make it too hard to ANALYSE data. This is true for individual student data, overall assessment data, class data and cohort data. I want a tool that does all of this for me at the click of a button so I can get on with teaching rather than number-crunching.
3) I could never figure out how to ADAPT my hard copy marks book for students on a modified program or those who needed a more flexible approach. I tried colour-coding, labelling, adding tiny text and about 50 other strategies before I realised it just wasn't working.
4) The science supports the fact that analog tools like hard copy teacher planners are fantastic for organisation and mental clarity. However, when it comes to managing data, digital tools are just more EFFICIENT and practical.
For these reasons, we decided to forego the traditional marks book in our teacher planner. This means we we had more space to dedicate to features you'll actually use like meetings pages, planning pages, term calendars and a professional learning log.
And what do we use instead? Just a stock standard assessment Excel spreadsheet. Simple and powerful. To celebrate World Teachers Day, we've decided to give you TWO FREE spreadsheets - one for junior classes and one for senior classes. Download, share and customise as you like!
Get the free spreadsheets by heading to our Resources page. No need to subscribe or sign in - download and use as you like!
