Printable Gradebook
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Gradebooks are an essential part of record keeping and planning, and an invaluable tool for teachers. Used to track student performance, information from gradebook records can be used to generate report cards or monthly progress reports. Accurate grades allow you to effectively communicate student progress with parents and guardians. Gradebooks can also help you stay organized as a teacher. As you fill out your lesson plan templates each week, you can quickly update your gradebook to reflect graded assignments. You can also use gradebooks to see which students didn’t turn in an assignment. By analyzing the data, you can look for gaps in your teaching. If the majority of the class scored poorly on an assignment, you may consider reteaching it using different teaching methods, and updating your planner for next year. Some teachers prefer to purchase physical gradebooks, but many are turning to printable gradebook templates. When you use a printable template to create your gradebook, you can customize it to meet the needs of each individual class. You can also type the text and avoid writing everything by hand. If you’re looking for a basic, customizable free printable gradebook that you can use with any grading system, you will want this template.
What Is a Gradebook?
A gradebook, also spelled grade book, is a record keeping tool for teachers, administrators, supervisors, or anyone else who needs to keep track of assignments. It is a physical or digital location where marks for each student’s work is recorded. To prepare a gradebook for use, you need to add some information about your class. You write student names in one column, one student per row. You also need to add the assignments you will be scoring. These typically go at the top, one assignment for each column. When it’s time to use, you find the intersection of the student name and the assignment. Then in that space, you write their score. Do this for each student, and you will have an organized record of scores. Each time you grade papers, repeat these steps. When it’s time to calculate final scores at the end of a grading period, you will have all the information you need.
Template Contents
When you download this Excel template, you will receive a printable gradebook template file. It is an editable template, so you can prepare the worksheet to meet your needs before you click print. Here is what the template looks like: 
Each page of the gradebook prints on a standard US Letter size piece of paper, in landscape orientation. There are rows to track grades for 13 students on each page. You can record grades for 23 assignments, and there are two additional columns on the right-hand side for calculating final grades.
Who Is This Gradebook Template For?
This gradebook template is perfect for anyone who needs to record data for multiple people. It works especially well for teachers, homeschooling families, and managers.
Teachers
Teachers can customize this gradebook template to document the grades they need to record. Elementary school, middle school, and high school teachers can document student scores throughout the grading period.
Homeschooling Families
If you’re looking for a homeschool gradebook template, this one will work well. It will help you keep your homeschooling records organized.
Managers
Do your employees need to pass certain tests to earn a pay raise? Or to receive certification? If you need a simple way to track employee progress through training, you can customize this gradebook to meet your needs.
How to Customize the Printable Gradebook
After you download the file and open it in Excel, you can begin customizing it. However, since there isn’t any pre-populated text or formulas to worry about, you can also print it out without making any changes and write in all the details by hand. If you would prefer to customize it, take some time to think about your grading practices first. Does your school district have any local policies about what information you need to record? How will you ensure you create an equitable grading system that isn’t subjective? To ensure your grading policies are clear, make sure to explain to your students how grading works. If you will be using a grading scale, explain it to your class. Include written information about your grading process in your syllabus and be open to discussions about it. You want your students to know what they will be graded on, and how that grading system will work. Then, you want to ensure your gradebook matches up with what you told your class. Knowing what you need to document will help you prepare your printable gradebook. The school year can get hectic, so you want to set your gradebook up correctly to make it easier to use.
Add Your School Information
You can add your school name and grade level in the large space in the upper left-hand corner. You can even insert your school’s logo if you’d like. To add a logo, follow the directions in this post: How to Insert a Logo in Excel 
Decide on Your Headers
When you download the printable template, there are three header spaces at the top of the page. You can adjust the number of spaces by unmerging the cells and then merging a different number together.
- You may decide to break the template up into weekly sections.
- You could also divide the headers up to reflect types of assignments.
- If you teach high school, you may break this up by class period.
- Homeschooling families may decide to divide the gradebook into subject areas.
You can even use the same template to create multiple gradebook formats. That way you have one that’s perfect for each class you teach. Spend some time thinking about what you want your gradebook to look like, and then merge and unmerge the cells to format it for your classroom. 
Add Your Assignment Names
If you already know which assignments will be graded, you can go ahead and type them in now. By changing the text orientation, you can make your assignment names read vertically instead of horizontally. This will help them fit better in the space and be easier to read. To rotate the text, follow the “Rotate Text” directions in this article: Align or Rotate Text in a Cell Once you get the first cell aligned correctly, you can drag the formatting across the rest of the row with the fill handle. Then any text you enter in that row will automatically be formatted the way you want. 
Insert Additional Information
There are still some blank rows on your printable gradebook. You can decide what information to include on these. Here are some suggestions:
- Date Assigned
- Due Date
- Day of the Week
- Points Possible
- Grading Scale
Add Student Names
Now, you can type in each student’s name. This way you don’t have to write them in by hand after you print it. Make sure you’re consistent when entering student names. If you start with first name/last name, stick with that format for each student. That way it’s easy to use and you can quickly locate the student you are looking for. 
Print the Template
When you finish updating your gradebook, it is ready to print. After printing, you can three-hole punch it and store it in a binder for easy access. That way it is easily accessible, and you can record grades in a timely manner.
How to use the Printable Gradebook
Once your grade book template has been printed, you can begin using it to record student grades. Each time you grade an assignment, enter the student scores in the correct column. You can either record the letter grade (A, B, C, D, F) or the total points earned. At the end of each grading period, take time to calculate the total points and document each student’s final grade. If you use any weighted grading methods, remember to change the grades accordingly. Then, write the final grades in the appropriate columns. These columns of data will help make writing progress reports and generating report cards simple.
FAQ
Here are some answers to frequently asked questions about the printable gradebook.
Grading on a curve refers to a variety of grading methods teachers use to adjust the scores of students. Typically, grading on a curve increases the student’s grade by moving it up a few points.
The curve refers to a bell curve, a term used in statistics. It explains the normal distribution of data. In the classroom, the bell curve refers to the scores the teacher expects to see. On a typical assignment, the majority of the class will receive Cs. Another section of students will receive Bs and Ds. Finally, you will have the students on either extreme who receive As and Fs.
When scores are plotted and connected with a line, it forms a curve. This image shows a simple bell curve:
There are two common methods of adjusting scores when grading on a curve. Teachers can:
- Add the same number of points to each student’s score. If the majority of a class missed four questions on a test, a teacher may decide to add the points from those questions to every student’s score.
- Move one student to 100%. If no one in the class received a perfect score, a teacher may decide to move the closest student's score to 100%. Then, they will add the same number of percentage points to each student’s grade, raising them all by the same amount.
Since this gradebook is designed to be printed and used to manually record scores, the simplest way to use it when you grade on a curve is to adjust the scores of your students prior to recording data. Then, you won’t have to try to change them once you’ve begun entering them.
Conversely, you can add an additional column for each assignment. Then you would record the original scores in one column and the adjusted scores in the next. However, this can make it more difficult when calculating the final grade, as you would have to delete the original scores from your calculations.
You need to abide by any scoring practices that your school district has. But typically, you will not need to record scores for every assignment. There will be some practice work that your students do that will not get entered in the gradebook.
You may also have students work through some assignments as a class, correcting them as you go. In this case, there would be no need to record final scores, as everyone would have earned 100%.
When you look through your lesson plans, you will be able to identify which lessons need graded and recorded, and which ones do not.
Many schools send out progress reports to notify parents of student progress in between report cards. By keeping your student grades organized and up-to-date, you will be able to quickly create progress reports.
If you need to prepare progress reports, you can use one of the final two columns to record scores for this purpose.
Simply add up the scores on the assignments students have completed during this mini-grading period. Then you can divide this number by the total points possible during the same period. This number, multiplied by 100, is your student’s score for the progress report. You can write this number in the column you selected for progress report grades.
The image below shows an example of this. The column highlighted in yellow is the column for Progress Report scores.
Keep Accurate Records
No matter how you format or use your gradebook, you need to keep accurate records. As you record grades, double check that you are recording the score in the correct space, and for the correct student. Small errors in grade book records can significantly impact a student’s final grade. An accurate gradebook can help provide evidence if a student’s grade is ever called into question.
Thanks for the template! It saved me a lot of time.