User Guide
(Teachers)
The English Tracker by Schools Development Group is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/
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The following slides are for all users of The English Tracker
Slide
No
4–9
Contents
.
Summary of Content
Introduction and Rationale
An Overview of The Maths Tracker
10
Diagram
Visual overview of how the Maths Tracker is organised
11
An Important Note
Hints about saving data.
13
Title Page
Hyperlinks to associated web pages
14 - 16
Enabling macros
This must be done to read the programme
17 - 24
Custom Menu : Students Tab
View and update your student info and grades
25 - 28
Custom Menu : Achievements Tab
View and update student achievements
29 - 33
Custom Menu : Reports Tab
Create spreadsheets for your class, groups or individual students
34
Custom Menu : Tables Tab
Create lists of Content Descriptors and Checkpoints for any year
level. Create Student Groups in this tab
36
Custom Menu : Query Tab
Sorting and Filtering data
37
Custom Menu : Utilities Tab
Printing and page set up
38
Custom Menu : Save/Quit Tab
Save and Quit
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Introduction
The English Tracker has been developed as part of a joint project between the Schools
Development Group and the Department of Education of WA.
The Schools Development Group is a not-for-profit organisation established in 1980 due to
a need to provide exchange on co- operative teaching approaches and school design
improvements. The activities of the Group have come from identified needs in public
education by educators and parents in schools as well supporting education specialists.
Visit www.schoolsdevelopmentgroup.org for more information.
The English Tracker is a culmination of two years work. The working party comprised of
Administrators, Classroom Teachers and Literacy Specialists from schools across the state
including Huntingdale Primary School, Highgate Primary School, O’Connor Primary School,
Southern River High School, Duncraig Senior High School, Como Senior High School as
well as Consultants from the Department of Education (WA).
Rationale and Aims
The purpose of The English Tracker is to provide teachers with a resource that assists with
planning, teaching and assessment of the English contained in the Australian Curriculum
(v7.0). It contains the Content Descriptions taken directly from ACARA documents. Each
Content Description has been linked to checkpoints that have been carefully written as
student behaviours that are observable and recordable.
The English Tracker has the facility to monitor student progress through the content and their
assigned grades for each semester. It also has the capacity for teachers to write brief
anecdotal notes about their students. An important function of The English Tracker is to be a
resource that collects comprehensive data on literacy development for a whole school, year
level, class and individual students. It is possible to roll the data over from year to year, thus
providing a valuable means of effective communication between the admin team and
teachers within a school.
Modes and Sub-Strands:
The English Curriculum can be organised into:
•Modes:
 Listening & Speaking
 Reading & Viewing
 Writing
• Sub Strands:
 Language
 Literature
 Literacy
The English Tracker will allow you to filter to the content into
either modes or sub-strands, or a combination of both.
For example, Reading and Literature …..
Checkpoints and Teaching Points
There are checkpoints written for each Content Description. These
checkpoints are observable behaviours that can be thought of as
‘tickable moments’ in the classroom.
Some of the checkpoints have teaching points that have been written by
experienced Literacy Specialists. These are designed to provide further
clarification of the Content Descriptor and often give examples that the
teacher may encounter. These teaching points will be printed on the Year
Level Overviews and be visible as a ‘mouse over’ on Student Achievement
reports.
Moderation and Consistency
The accuracy of any whole school monitoring system is always dependent upon the
quality and consistency of teacher judgement. Moderation between teachers is
essential if consistency is to be maintained. It is envisaged that the English Tracker
will provide the catalyst for professional conversations around the planning, teaching
and assessment of Australian Curriculum English and can be used as a basis for
collaborative planning and the analysis of whole school strengths and weaknesses
in the teaching of literacy.
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A few notes:
•
This program requires you to enable macros on your computer in order to read it.
This is not possible if you have your security settings set too high. The setting
needs to be medium.
•
It is important that schools devise protocols for the effective sharing of files. The
Admin version of the programme should be kept on a secure drive for admin use
only and the teacher files should be kept on a shared drive that is accessible to all
teachers and admin. The teacher files may be copied and updated elsewhere (eg
at home or on personal laptops) ...but it is essential that all changes are re-saved
into the shared drive and not re-named. Admin staff need to take care to only
make updates to teacher files if it is the current file to safeguard against lost data.
•
Always import teacher data before making any changes from the whole school
admin copy. When you export any new teacher feedback files back to shared
drive, this will overwrite any existing teacher feedback files.
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The English Tracker
Schools Development Group TEMPLATE
Student data
copied from
Integris
School Admin Copy
Contains data on all students in the school and is
to be stored in a secure drive with Admin access
only
Export
Teacher Copy
Import
Contains data on student in one class only and is
to be stored in a shared drive with Admin and
Teacher access
Reports
Generated about achievement of Whole School,
Year Level, Classroom, Groups and Individual Students
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An important note to Teachers ....
You will be provided with a copy of this programme in a shared drive at your
school. Your version has data for the students in your class only.
You will be able to update information for your students and also keep brief
anecdotal notes about them. This could be done in hard copy and or in digital
form.
There will be times when Admin staff will need to make changes to your file.
For example, when a new student arrives, a student leaves or when they
receive a new version of this programme. They may also require the data you
have saved and will need to import it back into the master copy (see diagram)
For this reason, it is vital that the file in the shared drive is the most recent file
that you have saved. You can copy the file and take it home or onto another
computer for your convenience.....but please make sure you re-save it back
into the shared drive on return to school. The necessary admin changes will
then be made to your most current file without loss of data. Your admin team
will devise a system to alert you to when a change is going to be made.
ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR DATA!
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Open The English Tracker...
In order to use the document, you will need to enable macros.
Please ensure that the security settings on your computer are set to
“medium” ....macros cannot be enabled if the settings are too high.
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Title Page
• The Title page can be accessed at any time by clicking the
Utilities tab and selecting “View Title Page”
• There are hyperlinks to related resources at the bottom of
this page. These include the websites of:
 Schools Development Group
 Department of Education
 SCSA (K – 10 Outline &
WA Curriculum page)
 Australian Curriculum v6.0
Enabling macros
1.
2.
3.
When the programme is opened a security warning will
appear. 1. Click ‘Options’ . 2. Select “Enable this content
on the security warning pop-up. 3. Click “OK”
Enabling macros
Add-ins Tab
A new tab called
“Add-ins” will appear
across top of page.
Click this to view a
custom toolbar menu
containing the
following tabs:
•Students
•Achievements
•Reports
•Tables
•Query
•Utilities
•Admin
•Save/Quit
Enabling macros
This custom menu contains all functions that you will need to operate and
maintain The English Tracker, including saving and closing the document.
It is not necessary to use any of the other standard Excel functions
(....in fact it is BEST not to)
The following slides will detail the function of each tab of the custom menu.
1. Custom Menu : Students Tab
(i) View Student data – by surname
This will display raw data of student details. It will also record
when changes have been made to students details and who
made those changes. This is a spreadsheet and can be
filtered and sorted in any way. Click Query tab for sorting
methods.
NEVER make any changes on this page. Use the next 2
selections on Student tab. The English Tracker : Teachers
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Student Groups – Update Student Attribute Data
The English Tracker v 1.1 has the capacity to group students into 8 different groups. Schools have the choice to
label these groups as best suits their context and needs of the students.
As a suggestion, Admin could ‘pre label’ in 3 or 4 of these groups before exporting the
Tracker to the teachers. For example, “ESL”, ‘Indigenous”, “Special Needs”etc… This would leave
4 or 5 groups unlabelled and allow teachers to group their students according to working maths groups
within the classroom. Groups are always flexible ….and students can be in more than one group.
To label groups, Click
on ‘Tables’ tab and
select ‘Student Group’
Type in column B to
change the
title of each group.
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To update attribute data (ie assign groups)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Click on “Students’ tab
Select “Update Student
Attribute data”
Highlight a student
Click yes (or no) for a
particular group
Click green “Update attributes”
after each student.
When finished, click Close.
there will be a “Y” next to
students name in columns K – R
as appropriate.
Students can be grouped by either
admin or teachers.
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Using Student Groups
A report
can be
generated
for
identified
groups of
students.
Click
Reports,
Group …..
Choose
‘Reports’’
Tab and
Achievements
Summary.
Choose the
group for which
you wish to run
report.
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The report will be labelled with
name of group and the date of
the report.
This function is useful for the
provision for differentiation and
IEP / GEPs
If you click Reports, Export
report being viewed into new
workbook…… you will create a
new excel document that can be
cut and pasted, highlighted,
add/delete columns etc……to
suit your own needs.
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1
1
Student Grades Data
1. Use ‘’ Students’’ tab to
“Update Student Grade
Data”
2
The English Tracker : Teachers
The Schools Development Group (2014)
2. Input grade data. You
are able to select
multiple students at one
time.
22
Using “Reports” tab,
Select “Grades reports
and
Charts”
View data by
chart
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In this view, if you
double click on the
numbers in the grade
chart, you will
see which students
attained that grade.
This is a pivot table.
Advanced users of
Excel will be able to
re-sort this table and
drag categories around
to compare groupings
and data.
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2. Custom Menu : Achievements Tab
(i) View
This page keeps a log of any changes made to student achievement. It
will give you information about date of change and the person who
made it. This is raw data only.
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(ii) Update for selected student and multiple
checkpoints
Use this page to update achievements of checkpoints for a single
student. This is useful when you get a new student.
1. Select the student.
Click OK
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2. Make
selection of
content.
3. The date
achieved is
month and
year only
(will be
recorded
as 1st of
the month)
4. Use the comments box for any anecdotal notes.
5. Click green tab and then close
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(iii) Update for selected descriptor and multiple students
1
2
3
4
5
Use this page to
update achievement of
a selected descriptor
checkpoints for multiple
students This is useful
when you finish a unit
of work and have a
group of students who
have achieved a
descriptor.
1. Select relevant
descriptor details
2. Select date
3. Add any comments
if appropriate
4. Select students.
5. Click Green tab and Close.
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3. Custom Menu : Reports Tab
(i) Achievements Summary
This tab will generate a report on the achievements for an
individual student, a group, a class or a year level.
This page is useful for teacher planning. It can be printed and
used as a pencil and paper hard copy in the classroom. A
report on an individual student can be used effectively as the
basis of an IEP or for use in parent/teacher interviews.
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Make selections to generate a report according to the
desired parameters. Click OK. An excel document will
be generated. It can be saved in another folder and/or
printed like any excel document. There is an option
“Export report being viewed to new workbook” in the
The English Tracker : Teachers
Achievements tab.
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Sample report for whole class
(This is an Excel document and can be saved and/ or printed) )
Date of report
automated
Date of report
automated
Surnames blocked for confidentiality
The red arrow indicates that a comment has been made by the teacher.
It will appear when mouse is hovered over it . Using the Utilities tab, it is possible
to set up the printing of comments.
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Year Level Overview of Checkpoints
This tab will generate a list of sub strands, content descriptors, and checkpoints for
chosen year levels. There is NO STUDENT INFORMATION attached.
This is useful for programming and planning.Teaching points will be displayed
if they are written for that checkpoint.
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Export report being viewed to new workbook
When you have generated a report it is possible to save a copy to
a new workbook in a desired folder.
1.Generate the report through “Reports” menu.
2.Click “Reports” then “Export report being viewed to new workbook”
and save in the Reports folder created in initial set–up
(or to a folder of choice for Teachers) .
3. This report is an excel document and can be
changed, modified and used as any other excel document......
or printed as a hard copy.
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4. Custom Menu : Tables Tab
This tab will show a list of all content descriptors and / or checkpoints
in the entire English Tracker. These lists will be useful for planning.
It is for reference only. It may be useful to sort the tables according to year level
to obtain an overview of all checkpoints. Do this by using the Query tab and
“Sort data being viewed” or “auto filter”.
It is also where you can personalise the names of you student groups.
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• A note about checkpoint coding:
Each checkpoint has a 6 digit code. Kindergarten is K and Foundation is P in this
coding.
Checkpoint Code
Means:
K00001
Checkpoint 1 for Kindy
K00026
Checkpoint 26 for Kindy
P00010
Checkpoint 10 for Foundation
Y01013
Checkpoint 13 for for Year 1
Y06056
Checkpoint 56 for Year 6
Y10015
Checkpoint 15 for Year 10
Y10A45
Checkpoint 45 for Year 10A
Checkpoint codes are useful for communication between teachers
in planning documents and collaborative meetings.
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5. Custom Menu : Query Tab
Use this tab to sort or filter data.
When a report has been generated click
“Query” then “Sort data being viewed” or “Autofilter data being viewed”
The data will always default back to custom view on closing the report.
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6. Custom Menu : Utilities Tab
View Title Page
This tab will take you back to the title page
Printer selection and Page set-up
Gives options for printers
and page set up for reports.
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7. Custom Menu : Save/Quit Tab
Always use this tab to save and close the programme.
(Rather than using regular Excel menu)
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