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Create an Elementary Schedule (Step by Step, From Start to Finish)

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Grace Russell
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This lesson will cover how to complete a basic elementary master schedule.  This lesson assumes that the school is using all day classes (not multiple periods).

Before You Get Started

There are some essential key set up components to prepare for building the upcoming year's schedule. Make sure to complete the following steps prior to creating an Elementary schedule.

Complete Rollover for the Upcoming Year

You must Rollover students to the new school year. To do this, you must first create the new:

Once complete, make sure to follow the steps in the Rollover School Year lesson to complete this essential process.

NOTE: You'll want to rollover both Staff and Students. If you don't roll over students, they will not have enrollment in the new year. If you don't roll over staff, you won't be able to tie them to sections, courses, timeblocks, etc.

Important Information for Office Staff!

When you rollover students, they will be Enrolled in the new school year. However, if a student should exit your school before the next school year:

  1. You will need to first delete the next school year Enrollment record.
  2. Then, you can exit them from the current year.

Graduating Students

  • K-6 districts: If you are an elementary school and will be graduating 5th or 6th graders, please contact Illuminate for assistance (help@illuminateEd.com). We will assist you in graduating/promoting those students.
  • In general, if you are graduating/promoting students to a grade level that is not offered by your district (e.g. you are a K-6 and your 6th graders are going to 8th in another district), please contact illuminate and we will assist you (help@illuminateEd.com).

Promoting Students

For certain grade level students, grade level promotion is handled by using a field called 'Next School' to promote your students. This applies to scenarios like:

  • 5th graders moving from elementary to jr. high.
  • 8th graders moving from jr. high to high school.

Please contact Illuminate and we will assist you (help@illuminateEd.com) with promoting your students.

Getting Ready to Build

The following steps focus on building scheduling components such as courses, teacher availability and teacher timeblock availability. All of which are needed before moving forward with creating an Elementary schedule.

Log Into Correct Year and Site

VERY IMPORTANT: When working with a new schedule, it is important to login to the appropriate year. Click on the Control Panel and select a date from the correct year. For example, if you are working on next year's schedule, then use the Calendar to select a date from next school year. This is important to ensure your course requests apply to the correct year.

After students have been rolled over, you can login to the new school year.

Set Up Courses

Courses must be set up at the DISTRICT level for the new academic year.

  1. Click Scheduling, then under Course Management, click Course Details.

NOTE: You do not need to visit the Course Details page unless new courses are required for the new academic year. If no new courses need to be created, skip to Set Teacher Course Availability.

  1. To view a list of your currently created courses, select District Courses or All Courses from the Filter drop-down menu. Then click the Search button. To create a new course select Create New Course (as shown above).
  2. To view or edit a particular course, click the view and/or edit icon to the right of the course name. Set the course grade level by clicking on the Course/Grade Levels subtab.

Set Teacher Course Availability

After creating your courses you must define which teachers are teaching which courses. Setting Teacher Course Availability must be done at the SITE level.  

  1. Click Scheduling, then Schedule Constraints, then Teacher Course Availability.
  1. Choose the Course(s) from the list on the left.
  2. Apply the course(s) to the Teacher(s) that will be teaching that course on the right, by clicking the check box next to their names.
  3. Be sure to click Save after assigning each/all teacher(s) to a course. Repeat this process until all teachers have been linked to one or more courses.

Set Teacher Time Availability

Once Teacher-Course Availability has been updated/reviewed, you will want to review and setup appropriate Teacher Timeblocks or Time Availability.

1. Click Scheduling, under Schedule Constraints, then Teacher Time Availability.

2. Click the Select all option (empty check box) to assign all Teachers to the Full Day or All Day time block.

3. Click Save.

Create a Draft Schedule

For Elementary, a draft schedule will need to be created. Typically only 1 draft is created when building an elementary schedule. When creating a draft schedule, use the Control Panel to be logged into a date within the upcoming academic year and specific school site.

NOTE: Creating elementary schedules must be done at the site level and cannot be done at the District level.

Begin by creating a draft schedule.

  1. Go to Scheduling.
  2. Under Draft Schedule Management, select Draft Overview.
  3. To create a draft or template schedule from scratch, click Select A Draft.
  4. Select New Draft to begin a new draft schedule

RECOMMENDATION: Since you can create many drafts, a good naming convention is helpful. For example: Draft 1 2-27-13.

To learn how to create a draft schedule visit our Create a Draft Schedule lesson for more details.

Elementary Scheduling

These next steps will have you begin to schedule and assign students to teachers and courses. You must stayed logged into the upcoming academic year and in the specific site you are scheduling for.

NOTE: Creating elementary schedules must be done at the site level and cannot be done at the District level.

Once your teacher constraints (timeblock and course availability) have been set you can now begin scheduling students. To manually schedule your students:

  1. Click Scheduling.
  2. Under Draft Schedule Management, select Elementary Scheduling.
  1. Use the drop-down menu and select the Grade Level of students you wish to view, and then click Filter.
  2. Select the students that you would like to schedule using the check box to the left of their name.
  3. 4. Select the teacher that will be assigned to these students using the Assign Student User drop-down menu.
  4. 5. Select the Course that the student will be taking using the Course drop-down menu.
  5. 6. Click Save. Repeat this process for every student in each grade level.
  6. Note: Grade level lists of students will shrink as they are added to teachers' rosters.

Using 'The Draft Board'

To place, modify, and make changes to the schedule prior to publishing, use The Draft Board.

  1. To change teacher, period, room, course to a section, click the blue section ID #. Click on Edit Sections (a new tab will open).
  2. To add new sections, click Create Section.
  3. To DELETE sections, go to Edit Draft Schedule Sections.

NOTE: You can also check the Incomplete Draft Schedule report under Scheduling Tools in the Scheduling tab. This will help you verify if any students are missing schedules.

Publish a Schedule or Live

You will review the schedule multiple times and make many adjustments. Once you are satisfied, you can follow this lesson: Publish Final Schedule.

WARNING: You can re-publish a Draft Schedule up until attendance is taken or teachers start using the Gradebook. Once attendance is taken or teachers start using the Gradebook, you can no longer override a schedule. This will cause significant issues.

Once a schedule is published, that schedule is now Live. You will now use Live Schedule tools to make adjustments.

After-Publishing Reports

There are a variety of reports that an be helpful after a schedule has been published and is live. All of the following reports are located under Scheduling:

  • The Board Your best report to view the overall schedule, filter and make direct changes.
  • Schedule 2.0 To spot check individual student schedules and make changes/edits.
  • Edit Sections To edit existing sections, make new sections, and more.
  • Incomplete Live Schedules To find students who do not have a complete schedule.
  • Master Schedule List To see a break down of all teachers, the courses they will teach, class occupancy, and more.

Visit Reports: Live Schedule for additional details and information.

Some Additional Things to Keep in Mind

  1. Complete rolling over staff at the end of the school year if you did not roll them over already.
  2. Add new staff to the new school year and give them proper permissions and affiliations.
  3. Complete the Calendar for the new year once the school calendar is finalized.
  4. Complete Reporting Periods for the new year for attendance reports once these are established.
  5. Set Grading Periods so teachers can use the Gradebook and Report Cards.
  6. Setup new Report Cards (elementary only).

Next Steps

Check out the Create an Elementary Schedule/Rosters video for more information!

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