The days of the written grade book, while far from gone, are rapidly changing, and educators are taking advantage of the ease of use and power of the worksheet to make tracking student achievement less burdensome. Using Excel 2000 to create and maintain your grade book can save you time and energy and eliminate clerical mistakes. Use Excel 2000 to create an electronic grade book to keep track of student achievement and do more sophisticated reporting of student progress.

TO CREATE THE GRADE BOOK WORKSHEET

1. Open the Attendance workbook.

2. Click Sheet 2 at the bottom of the workbook to move to a new worksheet. Double-click on the Sheet 2 tab and type Grade Book.

3. Click cell A1 to select it.

4. Type your name and press ENTER.

5. In cell A2, type the name of a class (for example, Science, English, or Math).

6. Press DOWN ARROW to go to cell A3.

7. Type Period 1.

8. Press DOWN ARROW to go to cell A4.

9. Format the column width. Type 1st Quarter and press ENTER three times to move to cell A7.

10. Click the Attendance tab to switch to that worksheet.

11. Select cell A3. Press SHIFT and drag down to the row containing the last student name and number you have entered. Then, release the mouse button. All selected cells are highlighted.

12. Right-click anywhere in the selected cell area and click Copy.

13. Switch back to the Grade Book worksheet and select the same number of cells you selected in the Attendance worksheet, starting from cell A7.

14. Right-click the selected cells and click Paste. The names are copied.

15. In cell D6, type Test 1 16-Oct-1999.

16. Move to the next cell in the row and repeat the step with the following column headings (these headings are used later for an example of calculating grades): 

When you are finished, cells D6:R6 should be filled with the above titles.

17. Adjust the column widths on the worksheet.

18. Save your work.

19. To rotate text and cells, see “Formatting rows and columns” later in this chapter.

TO USE AUTOMATIC FILL

1. Open the Attendance worksheet if it is not already open.

2. In cell C1, type Monday.

3. Click and drag the fill handle to select the cells through cell G5. Do not save your changes.