Handling a New Term in JumpRope

Please note: this article applies primarily to our school-based clients, and is not fully relevant to free accounts.

As more teachers across the country enter a new "term," we thought we'd provide a few tips on how to handle the new term with your courses, units, and grades in JumpRope.  There are a number of things to consider when switching a term, but we promise that you'll get the hang of it pretty quickly!

Here's the short version from a teacher's perspective:

1. JumpRope will never delete any of your data unless you explicitly do so in the school.  We retain all scores, units, standards, assessments, attendance records, schedules, and students between years and even between school years.  In other words, don't worry too much if something changes and things "look empty" - you can always view old scores in the Students->Archive tab.
2. As a teacher, you don't have direct control over the term or the term dates.  A school administrator, through JumpRope's Admin Console, will control the dates of the term switch and is likely in touch with JumpRope as they go through this process.  An administrator will also take care of setting up your class schedule and student lists.  If the term change happens unexpectedly, please speak to a school administrator before contacting JumpRope support, as we don't have direct control of term changes.
3. The major difference between terms is that most users will have new courses and class lists, which require new curriculum.  If you are planning to re-use curriculum from the Plan tab (For School Edition users, you can find your old units in the Archive section of the Plan tab and make new copies for your new term's courses. If you manage and write your own standards, it's likely that you use the School Edition, otherwise...  For District Edition users (those standard from a Standards Bank), your archived units are available in the Manage Units menu).  Only by doing this - or by creating new curriculum in the Plan tab from scratch - can you begin to enter scores.  Remember to update the dates!
4. All attendance and mastery reports include a date-range selector that will match the current term as set by a school administrator in the Admin Console. For attendance, this means that you can easily look at the relevant date range or change the dates to include the entire year.  Please note, for the majority of School Edition users, date ranges for mastery reports follow the dates on the units - not the dates the scores were entered - as detailed in this article. Because of this, it is up to each individual teacher to set their unit dates appropriately, giving each teacher the option of limiting units to a single term or, in effect, "annualizing" curriculum across multiple terms if class lists stay the same.  It is very important that you keep the date ranges on your units up to date in the Plan tab!  For the District Edition, date ranges for mastery reports follow the dates given to assessments.

Next, a few things for administrators to keep in mind:

1. In JumpRope, a "term" is a logical separation that typically involves a schedule change or change of students.  Elementary teachers can often get by with a single term per year, whereas middle school and high school teachers typically need a term per semester, trimester, or quarter because class lists change.  Please note that a term is different than a "marking period" in that it literally involves new courses or class lists rather than just a new period of grading (which can be handled in the system without creating a new term).
2. At the change of a term, it is assumed that new curriculum will be created.  If this is not the case, you'll need to "retrieve" old units from the "Archived Units" category and clone them into your new courses.
3. JumpRope can only operate within the context of a single term at once for the purposes of attendance entry.  However, scores for classes from previous terms can easily be accessed and edited within the Grade tab.  Additionally, mastery reports can easily be accessed for previous terms simply by making sure that the date range at the top of the report matches the date range of the desired term.
4. To change the current term, access the Admin Console and select the "Schedule" section of the Settings tab.  Then, click on the "Begin New Term" button and follow the instructions on screen.  The next time that teachers log in, they'll be using JumpRope in the context of the new term!
5. Important: if your school imports a schedule from another system (such as Power School, Infinite Campus, or HSST/STARS) into JumpRope, be sure to import the new term's schedule before changing the current term.  If you don't import a schedule for the new term, teachers will see blank schedules and chaos is certain to ensue!
6. If at any point you have questions or need consultation for this process, please reach out to JumpRope support as soon as possible!  This is a busy time of the year, but we'll do our best to help.

These tools allow you to both handle multiple terms AND retain important information over the entire year. 

Happy tracking!

Jesse