[sims] Nova-T adding a year band... problem!!?

[DamienTT]

Dear all

A teacher has asked me to add an intervention class. We have 2 bands in our year group 7x & 7y. The new class has been requested as 7p (for the 7x band) and 7q (for the 7y). I've created these 2 extra bands and dragged the other lessons into it as the students for the 7p class have 7x classes for the rest of their timetable.

 

 

Now the problem has arisen that when I uploaded it, sims deleted all of the timetables of 7x, (as SIMS now believes that they are all 7xp I assume??). After a short moment of panic I loaded up the back up and now back to normal.

 

Is there any other way of adding extra bands without having to re-input the timetables of all of a year group?

 

I originally set these lessons up as an alternative curriculum, but the alt cur names classes as Mon1/tues3/tues4 instead of 7p/Humanities for example. This is a pain for the exams department as it's hard to differentiate the different classes, especially if there are more than one alt curric on any period.

 

I was originally going to add a 7p year group and just have 7p/Humanities in it, then just add students from 7x into it using timetable in SIMS. Would this work? Adding a 7p class to a 7x student timetable?

 

Many thanks for help, I'm not sure if this is clear, please ask any questions.

 

Damien

[vikpaw]

I'm going to guess a bit at what you want to achieve, because it's not clear.

You have your Y7 split into x and y, and all the Xs have their classes together, and the Ys together.

 

If you want to add an extra class only for the Xs, you can add it to the existing blocks. If it needs for all the X group to be muddled up, in a unique way that doesn't currently exist, then add another block, with just that lesson in it.

 

If you move classes out of a block and into another differently named one, this will make the system think it's a totally new set up and will be why the timetable was lost, as the students won't have membership of the newly named structures.

 

Hope that sort of makes sense.

 

/EDITED for clarity.

Edited September 29, 2014 by vikpaw

[DamienTT]

Thanks vikpaw. Apologies for the muddy explanation. Currently each yeargroup is in 2 bands, x and yI've been asked to create an extra humanities class for lower achievers who will come out of their existing humanities classes 3 times a week to study a term of geography then a term of history then a term of Re. (rather than 1 of each a week).I've been asked to call the new class 7p/humanities (for the 7x students) and 7q/Humanities (for the 7y students). I suppose I could create a block and lock it, as Nova will think that they've already had humanities lessons.Or create a new lesson first called pHu and qHu?Would creating a new scheme be better? I don't understand schemes however, so if so that'll be a further post no doubt.Many thanksDamien

[MattMitchell]

You can use the academic promotion routine to copy the memberships across though (or use the curriculum assignment window and show the previous membership)

[DamienTT]

Thanks MM. I know that the curriculum assignment window is in SIMS, which I use to TT. I don;t know how to show previous memberships however. Is the academic promotion routine in sims too?

[MattMitchell]

Yes, it's in sims. For the curriculum assignment window you can right-click the column headings and choose "add scheme", and select the relevant block but put in an older effective date to show which groups students used to be in.

 

After that, sort by the column, select a class worth of students at a time and put in the "new" class

[DamienTT]

Thanks MM, doesn't that mean however that I have to do this for each student, via the curriculum assignment (by student) page? Seems long winded.

 

 

I can't see a way of adding a scheme using the curriculum assignment by scheme.

[vikpaw]

i'm lost with what we're doing now. doesn't the add scheme button work.?

[DamienTT]

hehe, yes it does work, but this is per pupil (add scheme per pupil) of which there are 170. I don't fancy having to do this 170 times, nor do I believe even SIMS is that ridiculous. You can allocate students to schemes (like allocating students to a class) via curriculum assignment by scheme, but it is this that doesn't have an add scheme button. So I was wondering if I just have to come in hours early one day and do this 170 times as I can't fathom how to do it a class at a time, only a student at a time

[vikpaw]

if you go to curriculum assignment by scheme, go to the scheme you want. then right click the column heading and display, you can 'add scheme' here for reference. won't that allow you to see the old or even current scheme, sort by membership in it and then allocate in bulk.

[DamienTT]

Ah yes, I had to click on the student name colum/display then click on add scheme button. Thank you.So that's an option.I'm playing about with just adding a new block in 7x called 7p Humanities to see if I can just get around it that way

[vikpaw]

That's what i tht would work initially.

edit: the new block i mean.

[DamienTT]

I was told not to di it this way as the class only has 6 students in it, and the x and y bands have 85 kids in them, does it matter that the model will show kids left out? Shown below

[vikpaw]

If they occur at the same time as the original block, why not just add a new row to the block. So all kids have an allocation, in one of the original classes, or in this class. You won't have the same control over the name, though you could 'expand' the blocks / columns (option in nova) and manually add the p to the class name for that row.

[MattMitchell]

You can manually name the class as something else from the Class process in nova, if the precise name is an issue

[DamienTT]

Dear all. Thanks for all your help.In the end I added a Hu lesson to the liniar block of Y7 as it happened at the same time. I used group name option to change this to 'P' and Q' as needed. Year 8 I added a new block of Hu in 8x year group using group name to change this to P so that it shows as 8P/Hu. Lots of clashes in Y8 but locked and sent across with fingers and toes crossed. Seems to be working well, although it didn't populate with students when I assigned them in SIMS, it did the day later however so something learnt there too.Have a good one, no doubt I'll be asking more questions later!Damien

[DamienTT]

Scratch that, clashes are stopping me from choosing the lesson I want for the kids. In curriculum scheme I get a tick in brackets for the lesson I want, that I've allocated with the date range but it's showing the other ticked lesson on their timetable. Any help peeps??

 

[vikpaw]

looks like a clash of date ranges. brackets usually means it's the old (prior) group. sometimes only viewing from today to end of current academic year can help show what the situation is.

you might need to manually change the memberships to remove the old class membership.

[DamienTT]

Thank you. Amazingly I closed SIMS and reopened. Now the clashes are gone. In Assignment by scheme those bracketed ticks are gone now. But for some reason it hasn't populated the lesson in the student's timetable. I went into curriculum assignment by student and the periods were blank. On double clicking the day the lesson options came up and the 7p lesson had a grey bar along it not the normal orange one. SIMS really is a ball acheAll allocated, although I've no idea on the process, as it's been as zigzaggy as my golfing attempts

[vikpaw]

You'll have to run update course memberships routine after doing it all.

I think it's in the tools | academic something menu

[DamienTT]

Is it good practice to do that after making any and all timetable changes? I've not heard of it before

[vikpaw]

It usually helps when you've moved group memberships. Particularly when you've manually edited the bars.