These are the things you should check in your gradebook to make sure everything is set up right. See Navigating the Canvas Gradebook for more information, particularly on where to find certain tabs/menus.

1. Total Display

Total Display is the representation of the current average for the selected grading period. It should ALWAYS be displayed at the front of your gradebook.

To trigger this display, scroll to the far right of your gradebook entries and find the Total column, by default, it will be the last entry on the far right.

Click the 3 vertical dots to activate a drop-down menu, then select Move to Front

You should now see your Total column displayed as the first entry in your gradebook on the far left.

2. The Notes Column

It should be open at the front of the gradebook, right next to the students' names. If it isn't, you can toggle it on in the View menu, then select Notes.

3. Assignment Categories

In the far right of the gradebook, you'll see columns that list percentages underneath. These are your assignment categories. They should:

Add up to 100%.
Never have a column worth 0%.
Category Weights should align with what your school district wants. The district One-Sheet that your Data Specialist should provide is supposed to have this information. Check in with your TLS if you believe this information to be in conflict with what the school may have indicated to you.

*Note- if you have not configured your Attendance section properly so that it does NOT count attendance toward the final grade, you will unintentionally create a new Assignment Category default named "assignments" with a 0% weight. This will distort your Canvas grade calculations and display inaccurate averages for your students.

Please click here to understand and configure Roll Call Attendance

Below are two examples of incorrectly set up categories. They can be fixed in the Assignments tab.

4. Grading Periods

You can tell whether or not you have grading periods by checking the Filters menu. If it's not there, then you don't have grading periods currently attached to your course. You can also check in with your TLS to make sure of whether or not you should have grading periods.

If you are supposed to have grading periods (and for most schools this is true), it's important to toggle those on. This will help with keeping an eye on your class (See the next point on the checklist).

5. Due dates

As you start to pace out and assign your assignments, make sure to add due dates to them. Otherwise, they will not be counted when grades are pulled for the current grading period. You should check for these occasionally by going to the Undated Assignments option in the Grading Periods dropdown menu.

6. Setting up late submission policies

*Unless otherwise specified by the client school, this section is entirely optional.

When setting up this section, please remember that one of our primary goals is for our students to have many opportunities to be successful and demonstrate their understanding/mastery of knowledge and skills. For some, this might mean not penalizing late work.

To set up the gradebook to account for late submissions you will first need to click on the GRADES tab in your Canvas course.

Note that when you enter the gradebook, the course navigation menu will disappear. You can show the course navigation menu again by clicking the three horizontal lines in the upper-left corner.

Then click the Settings wheel in the upper-right-hand side of your Gradebook.

This will generate a pop-up window with this view below. Here you may check to have missing submissions automatically scored a particular score like a 0, 10, 50, 70, or any other value the school might dictate or that you might deem reasonable. You would need to check the box and select a value for this feature.

*Reminder- We are obligated to defer to the client school's policies here, even if our own preferences as teachers differ. Some schools do not allow certain grades like zeros for late or missing work.

*Note- this will automatically score assignments that pass the due date without submissions. But this is a one-time function. Setting a different number after the fact will not apply a change. All changes beyond that initial automatic scoring will have to be made by hand in the Gradebook view itself.

After that, you may also choose to set an automatic deduction of points to be applied for work submitted late. These deductions will appear in the Speed Grader view of submissions and a metric for how late the assignment was submitted is displayed.

Check the box for applying deductions. Then you may set how many points and specify for what time interval (ex: 10% points deducted for each 1 day late). You may also set a bottom threshold for the lowest score allowed given these deductions. As discussed previously, auto deductions will take place but any changes after the fact will have to be made by hand in the Gradebook view.

*Reminder- We are obligated to defer to the client school's policies here, even if our own preferences as teachers differ. Some schools do not permit the deduction of points for tardiness in submissions.

Lastly, be sure to select APPLY SETTINGS at the bottom and then click (X) to close that display.