Shows how teachers can set their own grade-scale to allow the grade book to auto calculate a letter grade, based on assignments that use the teacher’s proficiency scale. 

Teachers can always manually override each student’s grade when posting to the report card. This article assumes you are creating & scoring assignments in Canvas and using grade passback to send this information to the Synergy grade book.

Canvas Assignment Setup

1. When creating new assignments, set the points to 4 and "Display Grade as" to "Points"

2. Score the assignments using 1-4 values.

Example: You have five Canvas assignments, each set to 4 points, so 20 points possible. A student receives the following scores: 2, 3, 4, 4, 4. This is 17 of the possible 20 or 85%. On the traditional grading scale, 85% would result in a class grade of B, but you want 85% to result in an A. You can set up your Canvas course and Synergy grade book to achieve this.

What Are Your Grading Practices?

Things to think about before moving away from the traditional grading scale....

• If a student generally receives 3 out of 4 on their assignments, this would give them a class total around 75%. What class grade should this result in?
• On the traditional grading scale, 3 out of 4 (75%) would result in a class grade of C. If you set up a new grading scale, where 75% results in a B or an A, do students and parents understand that 3/4 on an assignment isn't necessarily a "bad score"?

Canvas Course Setup

1. In your Canvas course settings, click the "Manage All Grading Schemes" link. This will open a floating window.

2. Click the "New Grading Scheme" button near the top of this window and enter a name for your scheme.

3. Use the trash can icon to remove the grades we don't use (A-, B+, B-, etc), and change the "F" to NG.

4. Set the lowest % that qualifies for each grade. The high value for the next grade down will automatically update.

In the example below, I simply lowered the traditional scale by 5%. This is just by way of example, not a recommendation of "best practices."

5. Save your grading scheme and close the manage grading schemes window.

6. Back on the course settings screen, use the Grading Scheme pulldown menu to select your new scheme.

 7. Click the "Update Course Details" button at the bottom of the course settings screen.

8. View your grade book to make sure class grades are calculating the way you expect.

Synergy Grade Book Setup

1. Go to Grade Book → Grade Book setup → Report Card Score Type button.

2. Duplicate the "GenesisGrading" score type, rename, and save it. Don't check either of the checkboxes.  (It's VERY important that you duplicate the GenesisGrading score type and no others when copying.)

3. Edit the ranges for each letter grade to reflect the Canvas setup you did above. Note that in Synergy you need to enter both the lowest and the highest values. The "high score" value also needs to be defined to 2 decimal places and be within a hundredth of the next grade up's "low score."

4. Save your changes.

5. Go to Grade Book → Final Grade Config for each term by selecting the Report Card Score Type (step 3, above) for “Set all students to score type

6. Switch to the Final Grade Defaults tab and set all grading periods to the scale you just created. Click the "Save Defaults" and "Apply to All Students" buttons.

7. Check your grade book and make sure class grades are calculating the way you expect.