Student Planner & Courses

Classroom Student Planner

The Classroom Student Planner is a tool for teachers to plan, assign, and track assignments, goals, and events for a specific classroom. It gives educators a unified calendar to manage upcoming work, monitor student progress and attendance, and stay organized by subject, classroom, or term.

The Classroom Student Planner can be found by going to a Classroom/Pod, then to the Student Planner tab.

Note: The Student Planner accessed from the main left navigation shows all assignments and goals across the entire school. It combines the information entered in each classroom’s Student Planner into one unified view.

For more details, see the help pages in Student Planner.

Managing Information on Your Student Planner

Once you’re in the Student Planner, you can create and manage various tasks related to assignments, goals, events, and attendance. Here’s an overview of what you can do:

1. Create Assignments, Assignment Sets, and Goals
2. Modify Assignments, Sets, and Goals
3. Print Assignments, Sets, and Goals
4. View and Manage Student Submissions
5. Create Events
6. Record Attendance

Viewing Information on Your Student Planner

Buttons at the top of the student planner allow you to filter and organize the information according to your needs.

• View Options: these allow you to filter assignments in certain ways or optionally show more information.
• "Go To" Buttons: use these selections to jump between weeks and months in your calendar.
• Term Dropdown: select a term from the dropdown to view information.
• Week View/List View: choose to view assignments in a calendar or list view.

For more details, see the help pages in Student Planner.

Classroom Courses

A Course is a structured plan of study in a specific subject. It includes all the needed assignments, lesson plans, and attachments. Once created, a course can be saved and scheduled for any date, student, or classroom as many times as needed. Examples include Algebra 1, Biology, or 7th Grade American History.

A course can be created inside a classroom and used only for that classroom. However, all courses created anywhere in the school also appear on the main Courses page in the left navigation. This allows courses to be shared and reused by teachers across Spark.

To access courses in a classroom, open the classroom and navigate to the Courses tab.

For more details, see the help pages on Course Plans and Course Schedules.

Getting Started in Courses

To get started using the course feature, you first create a Course Plan. Once the plan is complete, you can create Course Schedules from the plan as many times as needed.

Creating a Course Plan

1. Go to the Courses tab in your classroom.
2. Click + Add New Course Plan.
3. Enter a course name and upload a picture (optional).
4. Click Create Course to open the Course Plan.
5. Add assignments, lesson plans, and attachments.
6. Once finished, click Schedule Course from Plan to assign it to students or classrooms.

Scheduling a Course

A Course Schedule is the implementation of a Course Plan over a set date range, organizing assignments into a structured timeline. Assignments appear on the student planner and student portals. The schedule can be adjusted to fit specific students or date ranges, providing necessary flexibility while maintaining structure.

To get started:

1. Click Schedule Course from Plan at the top of the Course Plan page.
2. Fill in the course details under Course Schedule Basics, including:
   • Classroom
   • Term
   • Subject
   • Students
3. Under the Grade Class section, select an existing gradebook or create a new one.
4. In Schedule, choose the starting week and set assignment days. Adjust dates and assignments as needed on the calendar. (You can adjust these later.)
5. Click Create Course to finalize scheduling.

For more details, see the help pages on Course Plans and Course Schedules.