Wondering how to set up your gradebook for report cards in DreamClass? The process comes down to three parts. Define your grading terms, build your gradebook structure, and connect that structure to your report cards. This guide walks through each part in order, using the exact steps DreamClass covers with new customers.
Key takeaways
- Marking periods need to be defined and connected to classes before any grading data can reach a report card.
- A grading structure is built from categories nested inside a grading period, with individual assignments recorded underneath each category.
- Assigning a percentage value to each grading category determines how heavily it counts toward the final average.
- A completed grading structure can be duplicated across future marking periods, instead of being rebuilt from scratch each time.
- A saved structure can also be applied across many classes at once, which speeds up setup but can’t be undone once applied.
- Grades only appear on a report card after they are copied over from the working gradebook and finalized for that marking period.
- Once every class is finalized for a marking period, report cards can be generated for the whole school in a single action.
What You’ll Need Before You Start
Before you touch the gradebook itself, make sure two things are already in place. That includes your class rosters and your list of subjects or courses. Every step below assumes you’ve already assigned students to classes and that those classes exist in your system. If your rosters or courses aren’t ready yet, set those up first. Then, you’ll have something to attach a grading structure to.
This guide is intended for the person setting up the system, usually a school administrator or founder. So, not for teachers entering day-to-day grades. If your teaching team needs a guide to entering grades themselves, that’s a separate walkthrough.
Step 1: Set Up Your Grading Terms and Term Sets
Every report card in DreamClass is built around grading terms and term sets, so this is where setup starts. A term set is simply the grading period your school uses to deliver results to parents. That is, whether that’s quarters, semesters, or trimesters. Because report cards pull directly from these terms, getting this part right first saves you from restructuring everything later.
To build your term sets:
- Go to Grading > Terms and Results > Grading Terms.
- Create the term set that matches your school’s calendar (for example, Semester 1 or Quarter 1).
- Add each term with its correct start and end date. These dates determine which grading period a report card pulls from.
- Apply the term set to your classes and courses. Select a grade level, choose the relevant courses, and confirm.
Once you apply a term set to a class, that class is connected to the grading period, and its report card becomes available to work with. If you open a student’s profile and check their report card after this step, you’ll see the connection reflected there right away, even before you enter any grades.
How to Apply a Grading Term to Your Classes
Applying the term happens at the class and course level, not school-wide. So, you’ll repeat this for each grade or group of courses. Start with one grade level, select its courses, and apply the term set you already built. DreamClass lets you select multiple courses within a grade at once, so you’re not repeating the action course-by-course.
Do this for every grade level your school serves, before moving to gradebook structure. The moment you apply a grading term to classes this way, that group of courses becomes eligible for report cards. That’s why it’s worth building it out fully now, rather than coming back to it later.
Step 2: Build Your Teacher Gradebook Structure
With terms in place, the next step is building the actual gradebook inside a course. Open any course and go to its Teacher Gradebook tab, the same section teachers use day-to-day, once setup is complete. Once it’s built, you can get more out of that view, too. DreamClass uses two building blocks here: Folders and columns.
A folder represents a grading period, most commonly a quarter or semester. Inside that folder, you add subfolders for the categories your school actually grades on, such as homework, quizzes, participation, or exams. Columns live inside those subfolders and represent individual assignments, like a specific week’s homework or a single quiz.
To build this structure for the first time:
- Create your top-level folder and name it to match your grading period (for example, Quarter 1).
- Click the three dots on that folder and add a subfolder for each grading category your school uses.
- Inside each subfolder, add columns for individual assignments as they come up.
- Enter a grade in any column, to see it reflected immediately in that subfolder’s running average.
Every time you enter a grade, DreamClass recalculates the average for that folder automatically. That means you don’t need to total anything by hand. To make things easier, start with one course as a test case before rolling the structure out school-wide. This makes it easier to catch mistakes early.
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Step 3: Set Grade Weights for Each Category
Once your folders and subfolders exist, learning how to weight grades in gradebook categories lets you decide how much each one counts toward the final grade. This is where you set, for example, homework at 30% of the grade and exams at the remaining share. That’s how the final average reflects your school’s actual grading policy, rather than a simple flat average.
To set weights, open a subfolder, click Update, and enter its weight as a percentage. Repeat this for every category in the folder, until the weights across all categories add up to 100%. If your weights don’t add up correctly, the calculated average won’t match what you intended. So, it’s worth double-checking the total before moving on. If you’re also deciding how grades should display to families, it helps to look at how grading scales work in DreamClass before you finalize your weights.
Step 4: Clone Your Structure Across Quarters
Rebuilding the same folder and subfolder structure for every quarter would take unnecessary time. So, DreamClass lets you clone it instead. Once your first quarter’s structure is built and weighted the way you want, click the three dots on that folder and clone it forward to the next quarter. Then repeat for each remaining term.
The cloned structure keeps its subfolders and weights intact. So, Quarter 2, 3, and 4 (or your second semester, or your remaining trimesters) start with the same setup you already approved. You can still reorder or adjust individual quarters afterward, say, if a later term needs something different.
Step 5: Save Time with Gradebook Templates
Cloning solves repetition across terms within one course. But most schools also want the same structure applied across many courses at once. Gradebook templates for schools solve exactly this problem. A template packages your folder structure so you can apply it to a whole set of classes in one action, instead of rebuilding it course-by-course.
Building a Reusable Template
Go to your gradebook template settings and build a new template the same way you built the structure in Step 2, with folders, subfolders, and weights. Name it something that reflects who it’s for, such as “K-5” for elementary grades or a separate name for middle or high school. Especially, since different grade bands often grade differently.
Applying a Template to Multiple Classes
Once your template is ready, open it and apply it to the group of classes you created it for. When you set up an individual course’s gradebook manually, you’ll also see the option to copy the structure from another course, instead of building it from scratch. This is useful for a one-off class that doesn’t fit your standard template.
Applying a gradebook template to your classes is irreversible. You can still edit the structure afterward, but you can’t undo the act of applying it. Practice on a single test course first. Then, only apply the template school-wide once you’re confident it’s exactly what you want.
Step 6: Connect Grades to Report Cards Through Terms and Final Grades
Grades entered in the Teacher Gradebook don’t appear on a report card automatically. And if you haven’t yet looked at how report cards work in DreamClass more broadly, it’s worth a quick read alongside this step. They pass through one more step: Terms and Final Grades. This is the section report cards actually pull from, and it’s separate from the Teacher Gradebook on purpose. It gives you a checkpoint before grades go out to families.
Before you use this section, confirm the dates on your term sets are accurate. A term set that still shows the default date range, rather than your school’s actual quarter dates, will throw off which grades count toward which report card.
Copying Grades from the Teacher Gradebook
For each class, go to Terms and Final Grades, select the relevant term (Quarter 1, for example). Then, click the three dots, and copy the grades over from the Teacher Gradebook. This pulls in the calculated average your teachers have already built up through the term.
Locking Grades for the Term
Once you’ve copied the grades over, lock them for that term. Locking doesn’t require re-entering anything. The calculation already happened in the Teacher Gradebook. It simply finalizes that term’s numbers, so they’re ready to appear on the report card.
Step 7: Issue Report Cards in Bulk
With grading terms applied, your gradebook structure built, and final grades locked for the term, you’re ready to issue report cards. Confirm every course has its final grades set in the Terms and Final Grades section. Then issue report cards in bulk for the marking period, rather than generating them one student at a time.
This bulk step is the payoff for the earlier setup work. Because every class was already connected to the correct term, issuing report cards becomes a single action, instead of a manual task at the end of each grading period. Once this structure is working, rolling it over into the next school period takes far less effort than building it from scratch again.
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It generates neat PDFs of the report cards, we update the attendance daily, we use the admission forms integrated on our website, we now transition from paper to one digital database.
▶️ Watch the video:
00:00 Hi everyone, this is Lida, and in this quick video we’re going to learn all about Gradebook. This video is intended, uh, for administrators, so if teachers, if your teacher team wants to know how to enter grades, there’s another video that our support team can send you.
00:16 So, this video is for any, uh, customer who has recently bought DreamClass and would like to set up the Gradebook so that you are able to have your teachers enter grades for your marking periods, as well as to be able to issue report cards.
00:31 So, there are a few things that we need to set up. First, we need to make sure that, uh, your marking periods, uh, quarter semesters or trimesters that your school may be having, uh, are successfully set up.
00:43 So, the first thing that we’re going to start with is the grading part. So, when you go to the grading in the terms and results, you have the grading terms.
00:53 So, what is that? So, in your grading menu, you have, um, the term sets. The term sets are a specific period of time in which each school may have, uh, to deliver grades to the parents.
01:06 So, that’s the easiest way to, to understand that. So, some schools have quarters, some schools have semesters. Please create the one that works for you.
01:15 And you add the term. So, usually when a school has semesters, you have semester one. Which starts in the beginning of the year, September 1st, and then it ends in the first semester, which might be at the end of December.
01:29 For this video, though, we’re not going to be concentrating so much on that, because we already have a term set.
01:34 But please apply the correct dates for you. And then we need to apply that term set in your classes and the courses.
01:41 So for this example, we have those term sets. And I’m going to focus on the first grade. So the first graders have different classes that we need to deliver records for, and then we need to apply the terms.
01:55 And once you hit confirm, your first grade class has this element set up. Let’s see what that looks like. So if you go to any student and you choose their report card.
02:07 What we just did together, When we connected the courses with the quarters, that resulted in us having a report card that we’ll be able to add grades on.
02:16 The following concept we need to follow on the courses. But now we’re going to actually build a template. So for that, go head over to your classes.
02:31 If this hasn’t been set up for you, please make sure that your class rosters are ready and the subject or courses look like this so that you have some available courses to work So when you click in a specific course, every course has some tabs at the top, and the one that we’re going to look over is
02:49 the Teacher Gradebook. So in the Teacher Gradebook, we’re going to configure one from scratch. We can build our own template, but for now we’re going to use DreamClass.
02:59 So DreamClass has two core elements. One is called a folder, and one is called a column. A folder for any K-12 school that issues grades on a quarter or semester, the the name of the folder, the page.
03:13 The parent folder should be quarter one. If your school has semesters, this should be semester one. Why do we need to do that?
03:20 Because within quarter one, we are measuring and grading different elements. Most schools have the following elements. When you click quarter one, when you create your first folder, you need to click the three dots and add a subfolder.
03:36 Why is that? Because most schools have this structure. Homework, and then we’re going to save and add another one quickly.
03:45 You don’t need to focus on anything else at this point, just for us to visually see what that means. It means that, based on this setup, quarter one grades for your students are affected, or they are measured, uhm, again, has two main variables, homework and quizzes.
04:04 We call those folders. And in order to have weekly grades about homework, this is how we do this part. So Casey got 75.
04:17 Let me enter a grade. This is 75 for week one for homework. We’re going to fold this folder, and then we’re going to add another column under quizzes.
04:28 So quizzes are taken regularly through the year, and this is a very common task that the teachers are going to do, but in order for them to do that, you need to be able to have the template ready.
04:40 So now you see the ballpark of how we set up a gradebook. What is important to focus on is that there is a structure in a school Cool.
04:49 Uh, gradebook template. There are quarters, quarter 1, 2, 3, and 4, or semester 1 and 2, or trimester 1, trimester 2, trimester 3.
04:59 Every time that you think of this structure, this is a folder. So the master folder, the first folder. This one needs to be quarter 1.
05:07 Then within that, we need to set up how are we measuring the progress of the students. So in this case, this is the simplified version.
05:18 I added homework and quizzes. Most of the times, there are other steps. There are subfolders for quarter 1, which include, uhm, participation, and sometimes there’s also exams, or maybe a final exam.
05:36 You can change that. You can the colors so that the folders have a more of a distinct, uhm, overview. One of the things that most schools do is that their classes, uh, are, sometimes they have participation calculating 50% of your final grade as a student, right, 50%.
05:58 Your quizzes are also, when I click update, are also 30% of your final grade, or 20%, and then a distribution amongst examples.
06:09 So this is called the weights of each folder. And if you would like to set up the weight, you go to the homework, you click update, and you can change the weight.
06:19 So we have 0, uh, sorry, 0.29. for that, and then another 10 for the exams, which equals a total of 100.
06:30 So here, you see how we converted a simple gradebook, including the weights of each of those elements. The reason I show you this first is because you don’t need to do that for Quarter 2 and Quarter 3 and Quarter 4.
06:47 You can very easily fold and unfold this so you don’t see it, and you can click the three dots under the Quarter 1, and you can clone this to Quarter 2.
06:57 Then you can clone Quarter 2, you see the exact same structure was respected, and then you have to clone it two more times if you have a, a quarterly-based system, or just two times if you have a semester-based system, and three times if you have a trimester.
07:15 Once you do that, apologies, let me clone this one more time for Quarter 3, once you do that, this is ready, you can see that I can reorder this because I want the structure to be logical, and you can also, apply these to other classes.
07:31 So, when we go to 1st grade, if I go to Math, when you set up the gradebook of another class, there are some other options.
07:44 You see it says use template or copy from another structure. So, I’m easily able to copy these, so I don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time.
07:52 Obviously, that comes one step closer to a more automated way, but what I really want your school to use is now that you understand this, I start always from a course, so it can be your, like, guinea pig.
08:03 You can test and explore the options. It really is very simple. There is a folder system and columns or subfolders within.
08:11 Ultimately, this is not just a system of pretty columns, there are functions. The function is that every time you enter grades, the system calculates the average of the student.
08:24 So, as your teachers progress and add the different grades in exams or quizzes, our system, when a grade is entered, we actually calculate the average.
08:33 So, you can very easily see that quarter one is 81.67 for KC. So, start with one course, explore it, and then go to the settings where the actual show begins.
08:49 Because when you are done, Once you understand how the gradebook works, you actually need to set up your template so that you can quickly assign a specific template to multiple courses within your classes.
09:05 The that is you build a new template, name it K-5 if you have elementary, and you can build a different template for middle school or high if your school serves those grades.
09:18 Once you do that, you will just practice the exact same thing. The same steps I showed you previously, but now in the template.
09:25 Why would you do that? Because when you set up a system in the template, for reasons of simplicity for now, I will simply add three simple columns and not have the complicated structure we built before.
09:38 But essentially, that system that you have here can be applied in all of your classes. And this is how simple it is to have one template and apply it to 20 different courses.
09:51 So here, in this menu, in the course you will build the system we discovered together, and then you will apply it to all of your courses.
10:00 That’s how you end up with a template that your teachers can use to put grades for your students’ performance. Those grades, will are very essential because they will contribute to the next step.
10:14 The reason I started this video with the quarters is because DreamClass issues report cards. In order for you to issue report cards, you have to have the system of the quarters in place.
10:26 And you can see that what we did in the beginning of the video is reflected over here. So you have Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4.
10:34 Where does this come from? And why is it different than the teacher grade book? The teacher grade book is the section where the teachers put grades.
10:42 Thank you. The final section is where report cards are being fed from, where the report cards get their grades from.
10:48 In order for you to issue successful grades for the report card season, in the terms and results, we need to have this system in place.
10:57 So you need to make sure that the dates make sense. So we have September 1st to June 30th, which is not, uh, correct here because my quarter one ends at the end of October, right?
11:07 So you need to make sure that those dates are actually reflecting your dates. Then, once you have your classes ready, you need to go here and you have to assign that system of grades to all of your list of classes and courses.
11:23 I did it for the beginning, for first grade, but now we can apply it to the rest of the classes.
11:28 So if I choose here second grade, you can see how I can select all of my second grade courses and apply the term.
11:37 In this particular example, I’ve already done that, so you don’t need to, you know, you cannot assign it again, but in your, in your portal, you will be able to assign your system.
11:46 Your system of marking periods with the related grades. Once you do that, you will be able to have those columns ready, which is if we go to Casey, we have performance and report card.
12:00 So here you can see that there are available grades, quarter one, quarter two, sorry, marking periods, and now we have to enter a grade.
12:08 As your teachers contribute during the year to the calculation of the quarter, we’re going to use the English marks for this example.
12:16 When we go to the Derms and Final Grades. The teachers or the lead administrator need to go to quarter one, and you have to click the three dots, and you need to copy the grades from the teacher gradebook.
12:28 This is the last step for the issuing of the report cards. Somebody, you, or. The teachers need to lock their grades for quarter one.
12:38 They don’t need to re-enter them again, because in the teacher gradebook, we have those calculations readily available. In this case, it’s 80.
12:47 The reason I include this here is so that you have the complete overview. So, a successful gradebook setup in DreamClass consists of three main steps.
12:56 The first one is, we need to have a distinct, defined set of marking periods. We call those grading terms, and they are found on the grading when you go to terms and results.
13:07 These need to be in place according to your school and with the correct dates. Then, you need to apply those marking periods to your classes by clicking apply terms.
13:18 Secondly, you need to be aware of how the gradebook works, so that is included in the video. And then, you need to go to the gradebook where it says gradebook templates and you need to apply the template in your related classes.
13:31 Mind you that before you do this action, this is irreversible. Irreversible means that once you apply the gradebook template to all of your classes, you cannot go back and take that action back.
13:43 You can edit it, but there’s no way for you to reapply it. So before you make that step, make sure that you’ve practiced in a specific course so that by the time you’re ready to apply the template, you’re all set.
13:54 The third step is we do all that so that we can have accurate performance indicators, but also issue report card templates.
14:02 At the end of quarter one or the first marking period for your school, you can issue a report card in bulk.
14:07 In order to do that, all of your courses need to have a final grades already set up here in the Terms and Final Grades section.
14:15 Thank you for watching this video. I know it was a long one, but if you have any questions, I’m happy to assist you.
14:20 Bye!
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FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I set up the gradebook differently for elementary and middle or high school classes?
Yes. Build a separate gradebook template for each grade band, such as one for K-5 and another for middle or high school, since grading categories and weights often differ between them.
What happens if I apply a gradebook template to the wrong classes?
You can still edit the structure of any class after a template is applied, but you can’t undo the act of applying it itself. That’s why it’s worth practicing on a single test course before applying a template school-wide.
Do teachers need to re-enter grades for the report card?
No. Once a term’s grades are copied over from the Teacher Gradebook into Terms and Final Grades and locked, the calculation already done during the term is what feeds the report card.
Why do I need to set up term sets before building the gradebook?
Report cards pull directly from term sets, so a class needs to be connected to a term set before its gradebook data can appear on a report card at all.
Can I issue report cards for just one grading period at a time?
Yes. Report cards are issued per term, so once a specific quarter or semester’s final grades are locked, you can issue report cards for that period, without needing every other term finished first.
