Q Connect: Parent Portal and Student Q information:
Q Parent Connect is a way for you to follow your child's progress in their classes. Students can access Student Q through a website. I use the online grade book which will provide constantly updating information in regards to your child's progress in his/her classes. I will not use the gradebook in Google classroom.
Getting started:
Parents: Your child has an ID number, usually they know it as their lunch number. This ID number is needed along with a parent's email address and a password. Parents, Please do not give your student the password. We have had several occasions where students have locked their parents out of Q Parent Connect in order to "protect" their parents from a poor grade showing. If you have lost your password or are unsure of what it is, please contact either myself via e-mail to request a new temporary password. It will work for twenty-four hours, so log on as soon as possible and change the password to allow continual access.
Students: You should have learned how to access your grades via a smart phone and on your district issued device. You can also sign into cnusd.k12.ca.us and click on “My CNUSD”. Enter your lunch ID and school password. From there, a menu will pop up on the left hand side with “Student Q Connect” click to access your grades, class news, class assignment due date calendar and pulse. Any problems? See me for password reset or help.
Class News/ Class Communications:
Once logged on to Q Parent Connect, the website will list "News" as a heading. If you scroll past the School News, you will get to Class News. This is where you will find my updates which are also emailed out to parents and students each week along with a calendar. In Q, each week a new update appears. It will list the homework for that week, talk about upcoming projects, and remind students of any looming deadlines for tests and assignments. At times, I will even post information on the Class News/Class Communications website and ask students to view it for extra credit. This will help you not just to stay informed about what we are learning in the class, but also to help make monitoring your student's homework completion that much easier. This information in the class news is also what the student will be putting in their planner. It is an excellent tool to use if your child is sick or on vacation to get caught up with their work.
Assignments:
When viewing your child's assignments in Q, take a look at the graphic that looks like a little piece of paper. If the paper is blank, I did not enter any additional information about the assignment. If the paper has lines on in, that means the teacher is providing you with additional information about the assignment. I make it a point to provide as much information as possible about the assignment not just in an effort to keep parents informed about what we are doing in the classroom, but also to jog the memories of students when looking back on and assignment they did particularly well or poorly on. This also helps the students who were absent and need additional instruction on what to do. This helps when I have grade chats about any progress made in my class. Also, if you find an assignment that has an underlined name in addition to the name of the assignment in the listing, it is a direct link to a PDF version of the assignment. If your students was absent or they misplaced an assignment, you may click on the assignment at home and print a copy for yourself! This has been a hit with children who have organizational challenges, who travel between two households, and those who want to use the weekend to get work completed in order to raise their grade.
Accurate grading:
The beauty of the Q grading program is that the calculations are done for me. The danger is that I can mis-enter a score with an accidental key strike, especially with over 200 students! If you or your child feel I have made an error, please have your child approach me with their concerns during the following times: after class, during a passing period, at lunch, during fifth period, or after school. I do want to change the grade if an error was made. If not, I'd like to chat with your student about what went wrong on the assignment. In order to do this effectively, I don't want to take instructional time away from the students.
Holes in the grades:
Holes in the grades exist because the grading system shows an assignment due on a due date, not a minute timer. For example, if a large project is due on September 10th, then at 12:01AM while your child is fast asleep, their assignment is flagged (showing up in red) because it is September 10th and their project is not entered in the grade book. When a project is not entered in my grade book, it does not count as a zero. Many times, I will enter assignments in the grade book ahead of their due dates and I will usually get e-mails asking why a student has a missing assignment. Before you panic, please note that if an assignment is truly missing, it will be notated as a "Missing Assignment" or “Absent”. Please look to ensure that the column “Not Graded” is not showing. Often times, I have collected an assignment but can’t get it into the gradebook until I have reviewed the assignment. I try to do this in a timely fashion but Language Arts does not lend itself to quick grading. If the assignment title is in red letters, it means that I have not yet entered the grades for that assignment even though the due date for the assignment has arrived. If you want a rule of thumb to checking your child's grade and getting the most accurate representation of their progress in my class, please check after 5:00 pm. This little habit may ward off a few startling jolts to your heart on days where quite a few heavy point valued assignment appear as though they are bringing your child's score down before they have even set foot in my class.